Metacritic reviews

An okay kids' picture about a bunch of misfit hockey players who are brought together to play in the Big Game by a cynical, Yuppie coach (Emilio Estevez) doing community service. [02 Oct 1992, p.C]

As directed by Stephen Herek, The Mighty Ducks moves energetically but lacks the enjoyable quirkiness of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which Mr. Herek also directed.

It must be said that this movie is sweet and innocent, and that at a certain level it might appeal to younger kids. I doubt if its ambitions reach much beyond that.

Steven Brill, who has a small role in the film, constructed the screenplay much as one would put together some of those particleboard bookcases from Ikea.

THE MIGHTY DUCKS is harmless enough, but its schematic retread of a screenplay and its lethargic acting detracts from the unassuming, passable entertainment it might have been.

Herek's brisk pacing and skillful way with the hockey sequences gives The Mighty Ducks an urgency its manipulative copycat soul doesn't really earn. The Mighty Ducks - with its team calculatedly organized along gender as well as multi-cultural lines - is the kind of film kids like, then outgrow. [02 Oct 1992, p.49]

The film spends most of its time tracing Bombay’s predictable transformation from supercompetitive to supercompassionate coach, a metamorphosis that will most likely bore young audiences who don’t yet know what a mid-life crisis is, let alone identify with one.

As a light family sports feel-good this works but don't look for anything more.

The Mighty Ducks may satisfy the Pee Wee hockey players in your household but the rest of you may be turned off by the simplified penance and redemption formula.

Very lame ice-hockey flick. Estevez is arrogant hot-shot lawyer Gordon Bombay, condemned to community service for drink-driving. He reckons he can go one-on-one with his troubled past and get back at his boss by coaching a team of little league no-hopers (cast from a cupboard marked 'brats, assorted').