Space Buddies (2009)

Been a little while since I last covered a Disney movie, been having issues with Disney+ on my laptop but think I've sorted them now... hopefully...! But uh yeah, Disney week is back again! And I'm going back to the movie I wanted to cover back in March: Space Buddies from 2009. The eighth movie in the "Air Bud" series and third movie in the "Air Buddies" franchise canon but the first you can actually watch on Disney+ (or at least in the UK) because streaming is awful for archiving complete collections of sequential media productions. I'm sure nothing important happened in Air Bud 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, or in Air Buddies - the spin off, or in Snow Buddies - the sequel to the spin off... that is going to have any major impact on your understanding of this sequel to the sequel of the spin off sequel to the previous 5 movies right? Right? And it's not like the movie synopsis is really any more helpful either to be honest: "Disney's most adventurous talking pups take one small step for dog, one giant leap for dogkind." which, to be blunt, tells me nothing. That being said, for some reason, this found it's way onto my watchlist. Likely because it's just one of those frankly quite odd little sci-fi movies that Disney has churned out over the years and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little bit intrigued by it. 

The movie opens with Sam (Nolan Gould) and his puppy Buddha (voice: Field Cate) sat under a starry sky moongazing, when Sam exclaims how excited he is about seeing a real rocket ship at the field trip tomorrow at school, but disappointed that Buddha can't come too. The following morning after Sam leaves for school, Buddha rounds up the rest of the pups: Rosebud (voice: Liliana Mumy), B-Dawg (voice: Skyler Gisondo), Budderball (voice: Josh Flittler) and Mudbud (Henry Hodges) making it just in time to stowaway on the school bus before it leaves. The class arrive at Vision Enterprises in Fernfield, where the company are test driving their latest space travelling innovation the: Vision 1 - a space travelling vessel capable of remotely controlled flight, with the company vision being to make space travel accessible for everyone. Yes. Even dogs! The purpose of todays test flight being a trip to the moon and back for the vessel. As the puppies stay out of sight whilst the kids tour the centre, they are introduced to a section that scans and provides space suits for "all lifeforms." After deciding the suits look incredible, the dogs take turns suiting up before deciding they want to go and check out the Vision 1 a little more closely for themselves. As they poke around the ship, they accidentally get locked inside and with nobody realising, blasted off into space inside the Vision 1! However unbeknownst to the rest of the team, Dr. Finkel (Kevin Weisman) has sabotaged the mission, hoping to take over the project himself and when the leader of said project, Dr. Pi (Bill Fagerbakke) comes to realise something is wrong when the ship reports it's running low on fuel, Dr. Pi has to think on his feet quickly on how to respond. They learn of the location of an old Soviet Union refuelling station that is still in space and manned by a very stereotypical Russian Cosmonaut; Yuri (Diedrich Bader) and his dog; Sputnik (Jason Earles) who like the Buddies can also talk. After the pups decide to do a bit of exploring whilst Yuri refuels the Vision 1, they bump into Sputnik onboard who gives them a tour of the station. As they are checking out the kitchen, Yuri stumbles in and believing the puppies are gift from the Americans for letting them use the station to refuel, he locks them in the kitchen, accidentally trapping them onboard. As the puppies try to break out, Sputnik hatches a plan to tire Yuri out by making him dance and then, when Yuri finally does crash, Sputnik frees the doggos but also explains that he wants to go with them and go home. Meanwhile Yuri, realising the puppies are escaping activates a station lockdown but Sputnik, together with the Buddies jump into the Vision 1 before they are trapped and narrowly escape before the station explodes in a ball of fire caused by a fuel leak with Yuri seemingly just managing to escape in time. Meanwhile back on Earth the kids learn their respective pets are all missing and begin the search to look for them, whilst on the Vision 1, Sputnik reveals to the rest of the dogs that the ship is on course to travel to the Moon and not back to Earth! The following well, is it morning in Space? The following morning, the dogs awake to find themselves approaching the moon and B-Dawg accidentally activates the onboard controls, taking control of the ship and throwing the Centre back on Earth into chaos as they scramble to try and regain control. Sputnik eventually manages to gain control before deactivating the onboard controls and returning the ship back under the control of the Centre on Earth leaving them baffled as to what's going on onboard. After successfully touching down on the Moon, the staff celebrate whilst Sputnik and the Buddies go for a quick wander around and as they do, the team back in the Centre spot them on the ships external cameras and begin to realise that all this time they've had doggy passengers onboard the space ship! As they try to solve the conundrum of getting 6 puppies back into a spaceship and back home, Pi's pet ferret and constant companion: Gravity (voice: Amy Sedaris) reveals that she too can talk and contacts the dogs over the suit communication system instructing them to quickly get back on board. As they do, and spying the opportunity, the Centre quickly arranges for the Vision 1 to depart the surface and make it's way back to Earth. Spying the opportunity to cause even more damage, Dr. Finkel leaks it to the media that Vision Enterprises has accidentally launched 5 Golden Retriever puppies into space... and when the news breaks to the kids back at home, they suddenly learn where there beloved pets have been hiding! After wrangling their way passed security the kids find themselves stationed in Mission Control with Dr. Pi and the others and whilst they are being shown around, Dr. Finkel manually overrides to trajectory of the ship, directly into the path of a meteor! Realising but albeit just a little bit too late, the team manage to save the Vision 1 but it is struck by the meteor rending the vessel uncontrollable from Earth. After Gravity informs the dogs that they need to repair the communications antenna in order to be piloted home, Budderball volunteers to do the space walk and fix it. After some shenanigans, and a fart joke... Budderball manages to adjust the antenna and get back on board with control re-established with the Centre back on Earth. As they investigate what went wrong, with Sam's help, the team realise that Dr. Finkel sabotaged the flight path of the vessel and he gets dragged away by security. Just when it looks like it's all plain sailing back to Earth, the Vision 1 encounters Yuri's escape pod from earlier, on a dangerous re-entry trajectory. Gravity informs the dogs onboard the spaceship and Sputnik, assuming control of the ship pilots the vessel into a soft collision with the pod, adjusting it's course and saving Yuri from burning up in Earth's atmosphere. After a tense couple of minutes the Vision 1 follows and touches back down on Earth, much to the relief of everybody inside Vision Enterprises. In the closing scenes, the dogs are reunited with their owners and receive "Space Buddies" wings for their escapade into space. Even Sputnik gets to be reunited with his former owner Sasha (Reese Schoeppe) back in Russia!

This one got me in the feels a little bit guys, I'm gonna level with you. I think it might be because I just really liked Sputnik the Bull Terrier... but uh yeah, otherwise this was... well it was ok. I think I'm not really the target audience by about 30 odd years to be honest. It was kept very simple, and very basic and it progressed very slowly and carefully but that isn't to say it wasn't enjoyable because to a degree it was but it is very clearly a kids film and is deliberately produced as such.

The above accounted for though, it was produced fairly impressively. The dogs were real animals that looked like they were talking. Their jaw movements didn't quite necessarily match up to what they were saying the whole time but I'm willing to overlook that. There was at least a considered effort put in to make the dogs look like they were talking and it went some way into developing them as characters. They avoided doing the same in Beverley Hills Chihuahua which I think, to be honest, did hinder that film slightly.

Concurrently the acting from the human characters, although very much second fiddle to the canine characters, was mostly alright. It wasn't so ridiculously over the top so as to border on parody and was convincing enough that it was in keeping with the rest of the movie. Equally the voice acting from the ensemble of Buddies' voices was decent enough and although some of the jokes and stereotypes were a bit cheesy it was mostly vanilla enough that it didn't border on ridiculous at any point. It was all just fine, adequate enough really, that it fulfilled the purpose it was supposed to. Even the faux Russian accents weren't so bad.

Productionwise I thought the movie was pretty well produced. Especially for a lower budget straight to DVD production. There was the odd moment with the space ship and the various space set design dressings that were quite clearly CGI but I thought it was all mostly blended together well to as be pretty convincing. Even the brief scene with the dogs in zero gravity was pretty well done. The movie also made use of some pretty interesting and varied camerawork to keep it fresh and interesting to watch. It being a Disney production I guess you have quite high expectations, but even so I felt like it was all mostly pretty decent here and went a long way to making this feel like... a "proper" movie if you like for want of better way of phrasing it, and not just an extended version of a TV show episode.

Perhaps the only things really that I can poke criticisms at are that the plot was incredibly basic and it was kept very simple. Most of the movie is just showcasing the dogs escapades and the actual plot development almost comes second after that. There was a still a basic story that the movie was built around but it was incredibly simple and there wasn't any complex developments built in or anything too abstract that might have taken the movie in a more detailed direction. All of that is tantamount to creating what is by definition very much a young audience movie though and from that perspective it achieved it's goal. Making it any more complicated would have just made it difficult and confusing for kids to understand so I acknowledge that it had to be kept simple for it's target audience.

So for me, this was just ok. I don't think it was anything frontier pushing and I don't think it's really ever going to etch it's name onto a list of Disney's greatest ever productions but it was a fairly inoffensive, fairly easy to watch and with it a fairly enjoyable enough movie all on it's own. Even if I did get a little bit emotional over Sputnik and his reunion story. But yeah was alright, and I think even if like me, you jump in at this stage in the franchise I don't think you necessarily have to have seen all the others to fully grasp the deep and complex lore of the Buddies franchise. You'll do just fine without it. A mild 3 out of 5.