Rated PG - Running Time: 1:37 - Released 1/18/02
SNOW DOGS
Rated PG - Running Time: 1:37 - Released 1/18/02
Snow Dogs is the latest low-budget, medium-quality,
live-action Disney children's release to come out of the mouse
pipe; it features a strangely mixed cast, with old veterans like
James Coburn and Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols (who has
played either herself or communications officer Nyota Uhura in
nearly everything she's appeared in since 1966), newer faces like
Cuba Gooding Jr., continuing his steady descent from talented
Oscar-winning actor to Class-1A buffoon, and relative unknowns
like the sexily innocent olive-skinned beauty Joanna Bacalso.
A silly dogsledding comedy featuring Gooding's mugging, screaming,
slapsticky antics stitched together with the requisite childlike
attitudes about such things as life, love, and sex in the frozen
North, the film features cute characterizations, cute doggies,
and a cute ending manufactured to produce the kind of warm fuzzy
feeling the folks at Disney do with such annoying regularity.
Written by Jim Kouf (Operation Dumbo Drop), Tommy Swerdlow
(Cool Runnings), and several others, "suggested"
by Gary Paulsen's book Winterdance: The Fine Madness Of Running
The Iditarod, and directed by Brian Levant of Beethoven
and Flintstones
fame, it is as fleeting and insubstantial as a snowflake, and
about as much fun.
Operating on the classic fish-out-of-water theme, Snow Dogs
introduces us to Miami dentist Ted Brooks (Gooding), who, upon
learning he is the sole heir of a recently departed woman from
the tiny town of Tolketna, Alaska, also learns from his mother
(Nichols) that he's adopted. Stunned, he travels north to assess
his inheritance, which consists of a small mountain cabin, some
furniture, and a team of Alaskan husky sled dogs. While trying
to decide what to do, he meets some of the town's regulars, like
"Thunder Jack" (Coburn), a gruff and grizzled old musher,
resident hottie Barb (Bacalso), who seems to be the only young
woman in the town (wonder what her job is), and several quirky
and questionable types with awful teeth played by the likes of
Brian Doyle-Murray, M. Emmet Walsh, and Northern Exposure
veteran Graham Greene. Feeling that he should give mushing the
old college try, Ted spends some time being dragged through the
snow by the overachieving dogs and laughed at by virtually all
the townsfolk, although Barb does little to hide her attraction
for the only man of color in her snow-white town. Finally, Ted
decides to call it quits and head home, but some intriguing information
about his parentage forces him to return and hit the dogsled trail
again, with life-and-death implications.
This is one of those movies that makes you wish you were out playing in the snow rather than watching a movie. It's cute and funny in its way, simplistic, affable, and conveniently resolved, but ultimately better suited for Saturday TV—something to watch on a rainy winter afternoon when you really have nothing better to do. In other words, a typical live-action Disney release. ***