In "D3: The Mighty Ducks," the same old cast of characters returns for some more good old times on the ice. The scrappy, wise-cracking kids that formed The Mighty Ducks hockey team are now full-blown teenagers, voice-changes and all. This time around, they are awarded scholarships to the prestigious Eden Hall Academy, a school who take their hockey just a bit too seriously. Emilio Estevez's character is written out of most of the movie, making way for the hard-headed Coach Orion (Jeff Nordling), who leads The Ducks under their new moniker, The Warriors. As they fight for dominance with the varsity team, they also have to fight for their right to stay in school, lest the school board revoke their scholarships and cast them out simply for not fitting in. Along the way they learn more valuable life lessons and grow with one another, yada yada yada, so on and so forth.

If it feels like the formula is wearing thin, that's because it is. Don't be mistaken, "D3" is of the same caliber as "D2: The Mighty Ducks." It's an entertaining enough, simple and nostalgic sports flick that appeals to the whole family, but is nowhere near as inspiring and as spirited as the original. When compared to the original "The Mighty Ducks," this is just a ho-hum sequel that offers nothing new and is obviously made with intentions of milking a franchise name, which is made abundantly clear by its low budget look. But when it comes to Disney and its track-record for sequels, would you expect anything less? It's not all bad though. The acting from the kids is spot on and their chemistry is great as usual. Hans (Joss Ackland) makes his return to the series and even though Emilio Estevez looks tired in the twenty minutes or so he spends in the film, it's better than not having him at all. His turn as the Ducks' lawyer is a stand-out, a nice call-back to the original film.

Overall, "D3: The Mighty Ducks" is a contradiction, a mediocre display of nostalgia. It's entertaining enough, but too bland to really have a lasting effect. See it if only to complete the "trilogy" (although I get the feeling that if Disney felt they could, they would have forced more movies out of it) and to reminisce in the good old days, before Emilio Estevez faded away completely, before Joshua Jackson became irritating and before Kenan Thompson went SNL.

The first Mighty Ducks was great. Why make the next two? There are too many things in this one to comment on, but I'd like to go through a couple. First of all, weren't they the Junior National Team in the second one? And didn't they win the Junior Olympics? They weren't even one of those regional JO teams people play on, they were supposedly the entire U.S. So how come only one of them plays varsity? It's like, "you may have been in the olympics, but this is high school hockey, and we're varsity, we're better than olympics". If the varsity guys are so good, why weren't they olympics? Secondly, are they really freshmen? If I remember correctly, at the end one of them is kissing an upperclassman cheerleader. And there's no one some of them are freshmen. Third, high schools don't recruit entire teams, and close tryouts to no other freshmen than those on that team. It's against the rules. The only people that tried out were the Ducks and "varsity". Another thing, where's the Junior Varsity team? Schools don't do just Freshman and Varsity. Fourth, so many people are missing from the first movie. Danny Tamberelli's character and his sister were only in one movie. The brothers are gone, Jesse in the first two and Terry only in the first. The chunky kid and his dark-haired friend who always wore a hat were only in the first. You know what, I'm wasting my time talking about this movie, because it sucks. 1/10, only because I can't give a 0.

D1 was a fun innocent movie D2 was about capitalism D3 was more about politics

Usually sequels or thirduels are awful. The Mighty Duck trilogy was really good.

D3 is about the children getting a scholarship to a private high school. They must win games in order to keep the scholarship. They play one game and are axed. They get a new coach, things are different and they whine about it while they have a rivalry with the varsity team that look like 20 year olds.

Goldberg was so annoying he handed out tons of cringespears and annoyinghammers.

Charlie was cringy. He could act, I guess the script made him look bad.

From time to time characters disappear. Example Adam gets placed on the varsity team and that's the last we hear from him.

Russ Taylor could of had a good story arc about needing the scholarship but that went nowhere just as Russ would disappear during games. I mean in D2 he could play then he becomes irrelevant just as the other characters.

The movie has subtle race card moments that were forced cringehash.

Coach Bombay was only around to save the day.

The new coach was good his story was quite touching.

In The final game the varsity team should have won. The Ducks losing a close game could have been the Ducks gaining the Varsity Teams respect. That would have been a better ending than the cringefest that they shown.

What can be learned? You learn that your ego can hurt you more than you realize.

Verdict: Solid quacking trilolgy.