TREASURE BUDDIES
(G)
MOVIE: *** (out of 5)
BLU-RAY EXPERIENCE: ** (out of 5)
BY KEVIN CARR
The Buddies are back for another adventure. This time, after braving the snow, going into space, meeting Santa Claus and getting spooked on Halloween, they’re on a desert adventure in “Treasure Buddies.”
On the whole, I enjoy the Aid Buddies movies, which has been a healthy franchise that extended the “Air Bud” films farther than I ever expected. It’s hard to go wrong with cute golden retriever puppies, and while the puppies change from installment to installment, the characters remain the same.
In this episode of the Air Buddies, the gang of pups (including Budderball, B-Dawg, Rosebud, Buddha and Mudbud) hitch a ride to Egypt where they try to stop a race of cats from changing history so they can become man’s best friend.
There’s shades of previous children’s films throughout this movie. We’ve seen this cats versus dogs bit in “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,” though this one isn’t as rocky of a presentation. Additionally, there’s been a resurgence of desert adventures in theaters lately (including “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” a couple years ago and more recently “The Adventures of Tintin”). Even with the type treatment on the Blu-ray, it’s clear that the film is trying to emulate the spirit of the Indiana Jones films, and I’m okay with that.
But boiled down, this is simply another Air Buddies movie, featuring cute puppies and various talkign animals. There’s a monkey and a camel as new characters, which has been a staple of the Buddies movies for several cycles. It’s a lower-rent film than what you’d see in the theaters, but it’s cute enough for the kids.
The Blu-ray comes with two special features. “DIGS: B-Dawg Edition” continues the tradition of knocking off “Cribs” with one of the Buddies. This time, we get the blinged-out home of B-Dawg, who is probably the most annoying of the whole bunch. But like the film itself, the kids will find this cute.
There’s also a music video included on the disc. Both this and the “DIGS” featurette are also included on the enclosed DVD.