A Mule Props Up a Foundering Football Team in Gus

I don't much like the cartoon Family Guy, which is usually far too crude and irreverent for my tastes. But now and then I'll watch a bit of it, and years ago, I happened to catch a random segment that has stuck with me ever since. The television is tuned in to the news, and after sharing the headlines, the announcers cut to a preview of the upcoming movie, a Disney flick starring Don Knotts entitled Too Many Ostriches. In it, he appears to be at some sort of preserve, and he stands, abjectly traumatized, amidst dozens of placidly roaming ostriches. "There's way too many ostriches. Why are there so many ostriches?" he moans. "The brochure said there'd only be a few ostriches! This is a terrible vacation!"

I think of this every time I see Don Knotts in a Disney movie, particularly one involving animals. Gus is about a mule, not an ostrich, but it is every bit as ridiculous as that mock movie looks. Knotts plays the coach of the California Atoms, a pathetic football team that is in the bottom of the NFL. Even their halftime entertainment isn't up to snuff, so when team owner Hank Cooper (Ed Asner) hears about Gus, a Yugoslavian mule who can kick a soccer ball a remarkable distance, he has him flown over to California, along with Andy Petrovic (Gary Grimes), the teen who discovered his talent. After Hank's financial backer Charles Gwynn (Harold Gould) coerces Cooper into wagering ownership of the team on its ability to win the Superbowl this season, he becomes desperate to up their chances. His strategy? Let the mule kick field goals.

I absolutely cannot imagine a real-life circumstance under which it would be considered acceptable for a mule to stand in for a player even once, let alone week after week. Then again, most Disney sports movies in the screwball comedy genre play very fast and loose with established rules. Before you decide to watch this movie, you need to accept that it's going to come with a hefty helping of absurdity. Given that Knotts was the one who drew me into this one, I was hoping a lot of it would come from him, but he actually has a pretty minor role that doesn't really take advantage of his comedic genius.

Yes, we get to see a couple of incredulous expressions from Knotts, but Asner is much more prominent here. I would certainly call his the most engaging performance of the movie; he's at his lovably ornery best, launching into tirades at some times, slyly plotting at others. He and Gould have a great dynamic as the two men try to undermine each other's efforts - and Charles' tactics are just as unorthodox as Hank's and considerably more unethical. That Hank would not involve the police when it's perfectly obvious that Charles is sabotaging him is a head-scratcher, though I suppose it might come down to pride. He wants to beat Charles at his own game.

Not being a football fan, I found the football scenes, of which there were many, only moderately entertaining. You can only see a mule kick a ball so many times before the novelty wears off, plus we see a fair amount of regular game play as well. The pacing of the movie seems off to me, right from the choppy beginning, which alternates between stationary credits and regular scenes, with the result that the opening feels interminable. Several of the scenes in the movie seem to go on far longer than necessary, particularly one in which Gus leads a pair of bumbling crooks played by Tim Conway and Tom Bosley on a wild mule chase through a grocery store. It's funny, but it just seems to stretch on too long.

While most of the movie is pure comedy, there's a slightly more serious storyline at play with Andy, a sweet, sheltered young man whose accomplishments have never been acknowledged by the parents who fawn over his soccer star brother. His sense of inadequacy plagues him throughout the movie, particularly after his father suggests that his job of holding the football for Gus to kick could be done by anyone. It's easy to latch onto Andy and wish him a sense of fulfillment as well as a real shot with his dream girl, who is happy to serve as his tour guide but is in a relationship with a macho member of the Atoms.

Gus has a great cast, though many of the actors seem underused. The rivalry between Hank and Charles kept me occupied, as did Andy's struggle to gain self-confidence. I mostly appreciate Gus for the subtle ways he encouraged Andy without the young man's knowledge. Still, the more over-the-top humor is more prevalent. While I found my attention wandering, several of the purely silly scenes made me giggle, so while I don't think this is the best of the zany Disney comedies by a long shot, it's certainly good for a laugh or two.

Norman Tokar Strikes Gold With the Kidnapping Caper No Deposit No Return

Back in 2008, I watched several Disney movies directed by Norman Tokar, and while I loved The Apple Dumpling Gang, my response to the others was a bit more tepid. I didn’t set the bar too high, then, when I queued up No Deposit No Return, one of the last movies Tokar directed. I’d never heard of it before, but the cast – Darren McGavin, David Niven and especially Don Knotts – seemed promising, so I was happy to see it arrive even though I wasn’t sure whether it would be a hit or miss.

No Deposit No Return, like Mary Poppins, is the story of two upper-class children who have grown frightfully mischievous after years of neglect. Their father is out of the picture, and their mother is a magazine editor who delegates the job of raising them to maids and boarding school staff. Now it’s Easter break, and all Tracy (Kim Richards) and Jay (Brad Savage) want is to spend the week with their mother. To their dismay, they learn that she’ll be in Hong Kong all week, while the housekeeper who normally looks after them while they’re at home is headed to Bermuda. They’re being shipped off to Los Angeles to stay with their grumpy grandfather, multi-millionaire J. W. Osborne (Niven), a prospect none of the three relishes.

Tracy begins to formulate a plan for connecting with their overbooked mother, and when she and Jay find themselves sharing a taxi with Duke (McGavin) and Bert (Knotts), a petty safe-cracker and his driver, a light bulb goes off. After manipulating the men into letting her and Jay spend the night in their hideout, she writes a letter to her grandpa to announce that she has been kidnapped and tells Duke and Bert of her plan, explaining that all she wants is enough money for two plane tickets to Hong Kong. If they will only play along, they could be very rich men – and they are desperately in need of a windfall, since nefarious loan shark Big Joe (Vic Tayback) is on their tails. After all, how hard could it be to keep an eye on a couple of kids for a few hours?

Right from the credits, this movie is enormously entertaining. The stylized animation is reminiscent of a Pink Panther opening and bears little literal resemblance to the movie, though some of the kids’ adventures are hinted at in their animated exploits. Jay’s pet skunk Duster has pride of place in this sequence, and a shark, perhaps representative of Big Joe, surfaces to stir things up. I was smiling when the animation ended, so it boded well for the rest of the movie, and happily the live action lived up to the engaging cartoon credits.

Richards and Savage were both Disney veterans when they filmed this movie, and they seem right at home in this zany family comedy. I was especially impressed with Richards, who makes Tracy simultaneously sweet and devious. She is arguably the cleverest character in the movie, though her elaborate schemes don’t always have the desired result. There’s something hypnotically adorable about this plucky youngster. Savage is fun to watch as well, though Jay is such a walking disaster that I couldn’t help cringing a bit as I contemplated what sort of massive mess he was going to make next. Duster often steals the show; all he has to do is turn up someplace unexpected to raise a panic, and it’s quite comical to see so many people lose all composure at the mere sight of this docile creature rendered offensive by the noxious odor he could release.

Given Knotts’ comedic genius, I am always disappointed when comedies fail to take advantage of his full skill set. Happily, this one does, from his aw-shucks dialogue to his bug-eyed responses and his spectacular pratfalls. One sequence in particular that leads him on a wild skunk chase through a dangerous series of high-rise obstacles allows him to show just how hilarious he can be. McGavin makes a good foil for him, a steady, more serious type who’s got a better head on his shoulders but still is pretty hapless in most situations.

Niven’s dry British wit is the highlight of any scene involving Mr. Osborne, who, having tailed Tracy and Jay to Duke and Bert’s headquarters, knows where they are and rather hopes they will stay there. His lack of concern for his grandchildren is mildly appalling, yet his calm contemplation of how long this charade might continue is quietly riotous, especially as we come to appreciate just what a handful these two can really be. We mostly see him conferring with his faithful butler Jameson (John Williams), but he also comes into occasional contact with the duo of incompetent detectives trying to catch both the kidnappers and the safe-cracker. Thick-mustached Sergeant Turner (Herschel Bernardi) is the more experienced cop, and the breathless enthusiasm of his glasses-wearing, textbook-spouting partner Longnecker (Charles Martin Smith) wearies him. These two are almost as funny as Duke and Bert.

The movie, written by Arthur Alsberg and Don Nelson and based on a story by Joe McEveety, is nearly two hours long, and it’s packed with action, often of the humorously disastrous variety. A little of that can go a long way, but I didn’t mind it here, especially since the chaos is rarely widespread. It also never becomes crude, which isn’t surprising for a 1970s Disney film but is refreshing nonetheless. What’s more, along with all the goofy comedy, the story has real heart. I wonder if the season two Pushing Daisies episode Window Dressed to Kill took any inspiration from this; in both, a lonely, smarter-than-average girl convinces a pair of bungling burglars to kidnap her and a deep emotional attachment forms. It’s not hard to see the basic trajectory that the story will take, but a few twists and turns took me pleasantly by surprise. I do love a good redemption story, even when the baddies really aren’t all that bad to begin with.

I’ve got a few more Tokar movies lined up to watch soon, and now I am looking forward to them more than I was initially. While exemplifying his tendency toward excessive runtimes, No Deposit No Return never feels overlong and aptly demonstrates how well Tokar could fare with the right material.

101 Dalmatians Meets Air Bud in Air Buddies

A few months ago, I watched Snow Buddies, the most recent in a series of films that started with Air Bud. While that first movie and its immediate sequels are about an unusually athletic golden retriever, the focus shifts to his pups in Air Buddies. Although the original dog remains involved, this might almost be called a new series. Though Snow Buddies stands fairly well on its own, Air Buddies, which I saw the other day, is the movie that establishes the personalities of the pups, so if you're inclined to watch the Buddies film, it's probably best to start with this one.

Air Buddies introduces viewers to Buddy (Tom Everett Scott) and Molly's (Molly Shannon) brood, which includes spunky Rosebud (Abigail Breslin), messy Mudbud (Spencer Fox), gluttonous Budderball (Josh Flitter), athletic B-Dawg (Skyler Gisondo) and meditative Bud-dha (Dominic Scott Kay). As the movie begins, the five rowdy pups are causing big headaches for their owners and especially their long-suffering nanny. It's time to break the pups up, and so begins an extensive process to find perfect new owner for each of the puppies. Though young Noah (Slade Pearce) is reluctant to let the puppies go, his dad (Richard Karn) is sure the time is right. The pups have similar reservations, however, and when the list is completed, they decide to run away rather than be split up.

In the process of running away, they meet up with a pair of goony thieves sent to kidnap Buddy. So it is that they inadvertently lead their parents right into the thugs' trap, leading to a story that in many ways mirrors 101 Dalmatians, with the pups in pursuit of the parents instead of the other way around. (The debt this movie owes to that animated classic is acknowledged in a scene at a drive-thru theater in which 101 Dalmatians is playing.) The stakes are lower in this case, since the would-be possessor of Buddy wants him to amuse his son, not to turn him into a fur coat. The only moderately frightening villain is the thieves' boss, Selkirk Tander (Holmes Osborne), who threatens to feed his lackeys to his tiger if they fail in their mission, but that never feels like a very real possibility. Denning (Paul Rae) and Grim (Trevor Wright) are every bit as ridiculous as Horace and Jasper, though they lack those great English accents. Rest assured, though, they take more than their fair share of pratfalls as they struggle to carry out their task.

Director Robert Vince shares writing credits with Anna McRoberts and Phil Hanley, and none of them have too much to brag about, since most of the dialogue, especially that delivered by the puppies, is pretty groan-worthy. All of the pups seem like they're trying too hard to sound hip, which results in some of what they have to say sounding dated after just a couple of years. Denning and Grim, meanwhile, are hopelessly dim, though this does make for a lot of laughs as long as you don't dwell on their inordinate foolishness.

Interestingly, my favorite characters in Snow Buddies were the sheriff and his canine deputy, and that's the case here as well, though they are different characters. In this case, they're played by Patrick Cranshaw and Don Knotts, both of whom capped long careers with this film. Knotts voices a bloodhound named Sniffer, who has a more active role in tracking down the pups' parents than his boss does. While both are comical characters, they also bring a sense of wisdom and integrity to the movie. I also enjoyed the always-amusing Wallace Shawn in his voice role as a take-charge billy goat who helps the pups, and Michael Clarke Duncan is appropriately imposing as a mentorly wolf who guides them in the last stage of their journey.

Air Buddies is not a great movie by any stretch. It's derivative, corny and filled with juvenile references to bodily functions. But kids who can't get enough of movies about puppies will probably enjoy it, and long-time fans of Knotts or Cranshaw may be interested in seeing their final roles. It's not up there with 101 Dalmatians, but anyone who likes that movie is likely to get a laugh or two out of this harmless kiddie flick.