MOVIE REVIEW : ‘D2 the Mighty Ducks’ Takes On a Mighty Big Challenge : Underdog peewee hockey players take another slap at glory--but slip up in pursuit of the original’s success.

“D2 the Mighty Ducks” isn’t nearly as mighty as the 1992 original in which hotshot Minneapolis attorney Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) regains his values coaching a peewee ice hockey team. “The Mighty Ducks” cleverly managed to have it both ways: a movie that suggests winning isn’t everything but for sure lets its underdogs come out on top. By the finish of “D2” the message seems pretty clear: Winning is everything, after all.

At the end of that deservedly successful picture, Bombay and the mother (Heidi Kling) of a team member who stands up to him over the issue of cheating to win are involved in a budding romance. Logically, any sequel would have to do with the flowering of that love, but writer Steven Brill brutally writes her out of the script in order to get the Mighty Ducks team back on skates as rapidly as possible. Her total absence from the sequel is tossed off as Gordon, on the road playing hockey himself in a minor league, nonchalantly remarks on his failure to write to her and that her son doesn’t see much of his mother now that she’s remarried. This casual dismissal in the ongoing story of such a major, pivotal figure, a caring individual of warmth and strength, starts the film out on a sour note.

Brill, who also wrote the first film, is on to something valid when, a la “Rocky II,” he deals with the commercialism that engulfs successful athletes; you just wish that he had stuck with making this point and developed it fully. When an injury sidelines Bombay from the minors just as he’s about to make the move into the majors, he’s in a mood to listen to an offer from Tibbles (Michael Tucker), an official sponsor of Team USA, for him to gather up his Mighty Ducks, let Tibbles add a few more talented youngsters from around the country, and enter an international competition to be held at the brand-new Anaheim Arena. The idea is that the coach and kids are to be tempted by the sponsor’s blandishments--and the high end of the L.A. lifestyle epitomized by Rodeo Drive.

Such moral concerns come across this time as mechanical and secondary as director Sam Weisman piles on the stunts and pranks while the Ducks prepare to take on Iceland’s Vikings, whose coach (Carsten Norgaard) is so villainous that he seems to have stepped right out of a silent melodrama. Despite the earnestness and energy Estevez once again brings to Gordon Bombay, “D2” plays like a caricature of the original.

The urge to cash in on a film’s success by making a sequel is perfectly understandable, but “The Mighty Ducks,” by its very concern with values, provided a special challenge. In not meeting it by a long shot, “D2 the Mighty Ducks” smacks of a sellout.

* MPAA rating: PG, for mild language and rough hockey action. Times guidelines: Its language is very mild; its content is suitable for all ages.

‘D2 the Mighty Ducks’

Emilio Estevez: Gordon Bombay

Kathryn Erbe: Michele

Michael Tucker: Tibbles

Jan Rubes: Jan

A Buena Vista release of a Walt Disney Pictures presentation. Director Sam Weisman. Producers Jordan Kerner, Jon Avnet. Screenplay by Steven Brill. Cinematographer Mark Irwin. Editors Eric Sears, John F. Link. Costumes Grania Preston. Music J.A.C. Redford. Production designer Gary Frutkoff. Art director Dawn Snyder. Set decorator Kathryn Peters. Sound David Kelson. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

* In general release.