Before you watch Super Buddies — because your DVD is already en route — take a walk down furry memory lane.
Tonight marks the premiere of Super Buddies, the latest and greatest chapter of Disney Channel's series featuring the descendants of Air Bud, that canine wonder that was introduced to the world in 1997, defying physics, biology, and professional human athletes to dunk basketballs and score touchdowns. This is the seventh installment of the Buddies spin-off series — you've seen Spooky Buddies and Santa Buddies, right?! — and it will no doubt be the greatest movie about superhero dogs since at least 2007's Underdog.
If you consider Super Buddies a sort of X-Dog team, the next step in the evolution of animal heroes — and I do — it is important to look back on the cinematic anthropomorphism that came before them.
The first real animal star dates all the way back to the early days of the medium. Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepard rescued during World War I, was so popular during the silent film era that he was reportedly voted Best Actor at the 1929 Oscars — only for the Academy to intervene with horrible dogscrimination and rule that only humans could win the award.
Incredibly, Rin Tin Tin — whose real name was Rinty, as coined by Lee Duncan, the American soldier who rescued him — rose to fame using just his physical prowess and facial expressions. He never spoke in movies, even when talkies took over Hollywood.
In the 1925 film below, for example, Rin Tin Tin is described as a "half-breed wolf — combining the savage strength of the wild, with the intelligence of his dog ancestry." His name in the movie is Lobo — Spanish for wolf — and he has a love interest, Nanette. Romantic.
