Snow Dogs Review
by Frankie Paiva (swpstke AT aol DOT com)January 22nd, 2002
SNOW DOGS * * ½
2002 – USA
Director: Brian Levant
Writers: Jim Kouf, Tommy Swerdlow, Michael Goldberg, Mark Gibson, and Philip Halprin
Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., Sisqo, James Coburn, M. Emmett Walsh, Nichelle Nichols, and Joanna Bascalso
Reviewed by Frankie Paiva
Snow Dogs is not the movie you think it is. There are the required gross-out bodily humor moments needed to sustain the small children, but they come surprisingly few in number. The film really isn’t about the dogs at all, quite unlike what the trailers want you to believe. The film is about man’s connection with nature and beast in the setting of the gorgeous Alaskan wilderness. It deals with finding yourself and your past in the most unlikely of places.
This, however, isn’t to say that Snow Dogs is in any way a good or original film. It’s more by the book than any other recent kid movie, but salvages itself with energetic performances and by keeping the dogs silent.
Ted Brooks is a high-profile Miami dentist who finds out he was adopted. His real mother is recently deceased, and lived in Tolketna, a small town in Alaska. Ted flies to Alaska for the reading of her will. His inheritance is a pack of champion sled dogs. He tries dog sledding, but is, of course, terrible. He stays in Tolketna hoping to find his birth father. He eventually does find his father, love, and himself in the process. The result is sort of an Iron Will meets Max Keeble’s Big Move.
The above summary may be a bit schmaltzy for a film shameless enough to have a skunk squirt fluid directly into the camera. Luckily, there are a few jokes for adults, mostly racial ones that flew right over the kids’ heads. Like the recent Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, I found myself laughing more often than the tyke audience.
Cuba Gooding Jr. continues with the Supporting Actor’s Oscar curse (recently broken by Marisa Tomei with her In the Bedroom performance), and while his performance is just what the script requires, it’s no Chill Factor. James Coburn seems quite excited to be playing Thunder Jack, a local grizzly-tough dog racer. The biggest laughs, however, come from singer Sisqo, who plays Gooding’s dental assistant, and Nichelle Nichols, who plays Gooding’s adoptive mother. Both steal every scene they’re in. And as for the dogs, well they’re pretty cute as to be expected.
With all the fabulous Disney films released in memory (The Princess Diaries and Toy Story 2 being examples), the studio, for some reason, still thinks we want more of the same old formula thing. Snow Dogs is one of those movies. It’s so utterly predictable and cornball that I wouldn’t recommend seeing it willingly, but you won’t be bored if your kids drag you along.
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