MVP: Most Valuable Primate

From the producers of Air Bud, Air Bud 2, and Air Bud 3 (see any pattern here?) comes a new Air HEAD movie. The way different twist here is that instead of a story about a dog and his ball, we're treated to a tale of a chimp and his hockey puck. Undiscriminating viewers may consider MVP's story about the charming friendship between a young deaf girl (Jamie Renee Smith) and a sign language-proficient research monkey who narrowly escapes becoming lab-meat for bad guys and finds himself billed as top banana on a small town second-rate hockey team to be good, clean family entertainment. Cynical fogies, on the other hand, will find this to be a fairly nauseous, completely predicable groaner in which a lonely little girl hankers for a friend, the losers could do with a big win, and the seemingly inept goalie gets a new pair of eye-glasses (dramatically improving the team's play). In this little Canadian hamlet the adults act like silly monkeys and the monkeys act like, well, Hollywood producers going ape over the possibility of a The Mighty Ducks meets Ed wannabe hit. Critics will teeter somewhere in the middle, wishing that audiences looking for warm-hearted tear-jerking animal fare would check out old copies of Never Cry Wolf, Old Yeller or White Fang instead. An optional purchase. (N. Plympton)