MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Ducks’ Skates Along, but Usually on Thin Ice : The hockey film features Emilio Estevez as a disgraced boozer and some hapless bad-mouthed kids he’s supposed to coach.

Set in Minneapolis during peewee hockey season, “The Mighty Ducks” (citywide) has something we don’t see much in movies these days: lots of ice and snow on the streets, a Midwestern wintry nip. But that’s the limit of the picture’s exoticism. We may not be in the usual summery suburban family-film locale, but we’re trapped in the same old marketing hooks. It’s another picture that seems concocted primarily to make a good trailer--”The Bad News Bears” on ice--but without most of the “Bears’ ” humor or trashy dash.

In the 1976 “Bears,” we got Walter Matthau’s hard-drinking Coach Buttermaker and a team of Little League losers he almost took to the top. That’s what “Mighty Ducks” is about: a disgraced boozer in need of redemption (Emilio Estevez as Gordon Bombay) and the hapless bad-mouthed hockey dorks he coaches as a community service.

But, if you’ve followed sports movies since the days when Rocky Balboa could still lose heroically, you know that almost isn’t good enough. Up endings are now the rule of the day, and most movie makers have been turned into Big Game fixers. “Ducks” is a post-’80s movie that first tells us that the pressure to win can wreck your life, and then sends us out of the theater with John Spinks singing “Winning It All.”

Estevez plays a different kind of fallen soul than Matthau. He’s a man besotted with success, an arrogant go-go yuppie lawyer who can’t even admit to the one loss that sullies his courthouse victory string. Writer Steven Brill and director Stephen Herek (“Critters,” “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”) obviously consider Bombay a little monster. When they show us how he got hooked, it’s in a flashback that suggests a horror movie. In a funereal hockey arena, with an opposing goalie in a death-head mask, we see Bombay as a kid, muffing the one-on-one penalty goal that would have given his team, the Hawks, the city championship--apparently the only championship the Hawks lost.

“Mighty Ducks” treats losing as a trauma that emotionally cripples you, or as a habit you have to break. And it justifies these attitudes by showing its hero-winners as equal opportunity misfits, the racially and sexually integrated bunch that should triumph. It’s obvious that the manufacturers of this movie--it’s hard to call them creators--have several sequels in mind already for their attractive and lively kid cast: their pint-size Police Academy.

The Ducks have the populist variety of a World War II movie bomber crew. There’s the jolly Jewish goalie Goldberg (Shaun Weiss), the jive-rapping bro’s (Brandon Adams and Jussie Smollett), the brainy wisecracker (Matt Doherty), the behemoth (Elden Ratliff), assorted thugs, a figure-skating queen (Jane Plank) and a tough feminist (Marguerite Moreau)--even a stalwart kid (Joshua Jackson), with a feisty mom (Heidi Kling) for Gordon to woo. Arrayed against them are the omnipotent Hawks, the Hitlerjugend of the heartland, all stamped out of the same mean cookie-cutter.

The movie has a slick, quick, by-the-numbers style: Boy Meets Team, Boy Loses Team, Boy Gets Team. After a rocky start, Bombay wins the Ducks’ hearts and has them yelling “Quack! Quack! Quack!” as a furious battle cry. For the finale, the Ducks square off against the omnipotent Hawks--coached by the same scary mild-mannered despot, Reilly (Lane Smith) who drove Bombay over the brink as a boy.

Smith makes a good low-key villain. He’s whispery and mean and, when he glares out over a thin-lipped smile, he has an amusing resemblance to Dan Rather. Estevez, always very good at playing jocks, gets some sympathy for this latest variation on a new movie cliche, the reclaimed yuppie. But most of the movie is like the ice on which Bombay’s limousine rests: cold and shaky. The only time it really comes alive is in the obvious scene, the fast, furious championship, with every Duck having his day. That’s when “The Mighty Ducks” (MPAA-rated PG for language) finally delivers its big statement--which, depending on your viewpoint, is either “Life is a peewee hockey game,” “Let’s win it all!” or “Quack! Quack! Quack!”

‘The Mighty Ducks’

Emilio Estevez: Gordon Bombay

Joss Ackland: Hans

Lane Smith: Coach Reilly

Heidi Kling: Casey

A Walt Disney Pictures presentation of an Avnet/Kerner production, released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution Inc. Director Stephen Herek. Producers Jordan Kerner, Jon Avnet. Screenplay by Steven Brill. Cinematographer Thomas Del Ruth. Editors Larry Bock, John F. Link. Costumes Grania Preston. Music David Newman. Production design Randy Ser. Art director Tony Fanning. With Josef Sommer. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (For language).