“Ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball.”
John Oliver (who skewered One Tree Hill last week, no joke) has had enough of Air Bud, and he’s apparently chosen 2022 to settle some personal beefs about a 1997 movie. Why? Because there’s no rule that says he can’t do it.
Alright! Last Week Tonight took a week off the air, and there’s no time like the present for Oliver to get his Air Bud angst out of his system with a web exclusive. The host ranted for a full 15 minutes on the subject, which is basically Oliver in his natural habitat, sure, but he wanted everyone to know that he wants to address this topic (and why not? one can’t be super serious all the time).
“You’re thinking, ‘He must get paid extra to do these web exclusives,’” Oliver freely acknowledged at one moment. “I don’t … I’m not talking about ‘Air Bud’ because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to.”
Well then. Naturally, this quasi-rage sounds just about right for anyone whose kid made them watch Snow Buddies four times on repeat in one day (I wish that I’d made that up because those fart jokes still haunt me), but more to the point, Oliver took a shot at the rules of the film and how the franchise went so far (with double digits of followup movies) off base that it essentially turned into The Avengers with cape-wearing dogs. He made a valid point about how the movie walked a delicate ethical line about the kind of life Buddy deserves, and gave a valid nod towards Internet content. However, there’s nothing more damning about Air Bud than this revelation:
There you have it, Harvey Weinstein was ruining Air Bud all along. Ugh.