The Mighty Ducks

The Mighty Ducks centres on Gordon Bombay, a young lawyer whose career has been built on winning at almost any cost. After he is arrested for drunk driving, a court orders him to perform community service by coaching a Minneapolis youth ice hockey team. The assignment brings him back to a sport he played as a boy, though his memories of it are tied to a difficult relationship with his former coach, Jack Reilly. The players are inexperienced and accustomed to losing, and Bombay initially approaches the job with little enthusiasm before he comes to care about the children, among them Charlie Conway.

The film was directed by Stephen Herek, the fourth of the nineteen features he has directed in chronological order, following Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and preceding The Three Musketeers. Steven Brill wrote the screenplay, and Jon Avnet and Jordan Kerner produced. Emilio Estevez leads the cast as Bombay, with Lane Smith as Reilly, Joss Ackland as Hans, Heidi Kling as Casey Conway and Joshua Jackson as Charlie, part of a credited cast of thirty-two.

Released in October 1992, the film cost about 10 million dollars and took roughly 51 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on its budget. Audience response has been warmer than critical response: it holds 6.6 out of 10 on TMDB from just over a thousand votes, while film critics gave it 4.1 out of 10 from thirty reviews.