Air Bud

After his father's death, eleven-year-old Josh Framm moves with his mother to a small Washington town, where he struggles to fit in at a new school. Too shy to try out for the basketball team, he practices alone on a neighbourhood court until he meets Buddy, a stray golden retriever with an unusual ability to sink shots. The two become inseparable, and the dog's skill earns Josh a place on the school team, with Buddy serving as its unofficial mascot. Their arrangement is threatened when Buddy's former owner, a failed clown named Norm Snively, turns up wanting the dog back so he can profit from the animal's talent.

Charles Martin Smith directed the film, the third in his career as a director after Trick or Treat and Fifty/Fifty, from a screenplay by Paul Tamasy and Aaron Mendelsohn. Kevin Zegers plays Josh, with Wendy Makkena as his mother, Michael Jeter as Norm and Bill Cobbs as Arthur Chaney, across a credited cast of twenty.

Made for roughly three million dollars by Walt Disney Pictures with Keystone Pictures and Air Bud Entertainment, the film took about twenty-three million worldwide, a strong return on its budget. Audience scores are modest: on IMDb it sits at 5.4 from around twenty-one thousand votes, and on TMDB at 5.6 from some five hundred votes. A critics' rating of 5 out of 10 from thirty reviews places it in similar territory.