John Oliver once again directed his righteous ire toward Air Bud, the 1997 Disney classic about a golden retriever that joins a middle school basketball team, in a web exclusive Monday. Last Week Tonight’s first takedown of the defenseless family film was a similar exclusive in 2022, garnering 5 million views and inspiring howls of millennial nostalgia across YouTube.
“You might think,” Oliver said yesterday, “that I shouldn’t have anything more to say about Air Bud, which is true. I shouldn’t. And yet it turns out I very much do.”
His original polemic three years ago addressed what can only be described as the ethics of Air Bud. Buddy, the titular pooch, is essentially a stolen dog, and his rightful (though admittedly terrible) owner does not want him playing middle school basketball. Oliver, a comedic contrarian, sided with the owner, especially as he is arrested without cause after losing a custody battle with a boy over Buddy.
However, the moral absurdity of a central moment in the film in which referees scour the rulebook and declare there “ain’t no rule that says a dog can’t play basketball” was arguably glossed over. Permitting anything not explicitly excluded -- known today, naturally, as “Air Bud Rules” -- would suggest basketball players could, for instance, wield longswords on the court as long as the rulebook was silent on the matter. But Oliver did insist, in his defense of the legal owner, that “rules either matter or they don’t,” castigating the movie’s hypocrisy.
Oliver also took a pragmatic approach, arguing that Buddy’s four field goals, two free throws, and other low stats did not justify his presence on the team. “He’s a complete liability on defense.”
Oliver’s “Air Bud Part II” is an even longer critique, focusing on the bizarre plans for an upcoming sequel. There have of course been many follow-up films already, which increasingly go off the rails, featuring everything from Buddy playing football to Buddy’s descendants, who speak English, going to space. Air Bud Returns, slated for 2026, will be the fifteenth film in the franchise, far too many for the Englishman’s tastes.
The late night host lambasted the sequel for a plot reportedly identical to the first film, but practically screamed after explaining that the boy in the new film would discover a VHS copy of the original film: “I’m sorry, what?!” Apparently, a boy will lose his father, find a dog that can ball, and also find an old movie about a boy who lost his father and found a dog that can ball. This new boy, Oliver insisted, would lose his mind.
Oliver further marveled that the filmmakers had issued an open call for auditions (“You don’t have the dog?!”) for the Buddy role and cast two golden retrievers that looked nothing alike. He then wondered whether he could have auditioned. “I know I’m not a dog... So what? So what if I’m a man? After all, there ain’t no rule that says a man can’t try out for Air Bud.”
Historically, Last Week Tonight’s web exclusives, which are posted to YouTube when the HBO show takes a week off, provide lighter, sillier topics than the standard episodes, a welcome reprieve from discussions of censorship, the Israel-Gaza War, immigration enforcement, vaccine mandates, and so on. Oliver obsessively turning his critical eye and sense of justice toward dogs playing basketball is highly entertaining (his mission is to produce entertaining content “designed to occupy your time between now and death”). Last Week Tonight returns Oct. 26.