Snow Dogs Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)January 21st, 2002
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2001 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
(by Grandma Sick-Boy)
If there's one thing I never get tired of seeing, it's fish-out-of-water comedies. They just keep getting better and better. Why anyone bothers coming up with different or original ideas is completely beyond me. Why bother when you've got such a powerfully funny comedic bottomless mug like the F.O.O.W. genre? I was just saying to my friend Ethel on the way out of Kate & Leopold, I says, "Ethel, I sure hope we don't have to wait more than a few weeks before the next F.O.O.W. movie comes out," and she says, "Grmmnlemmmmon," because she had a pretty bad stroke a while back.
What Ethel was trying to say, I think, is - good news! - we won't have to wait long at all because Disney's Snow Dogs will soon be nipping at our heels like so many of those cute little Alaskan Huskies I've seen in the television commercials about the movie. And, better yet, my grandson gave Ethel and I passes to see the movie before it even comes out in the theatre (it's almost enough to make up for the general disappointment he has become). That handsome negro Jamaica Goodling, Jr. is the star, and he plays a Miami dentist who finds out he's adopted. But not only is he adopted - he's really not a negro at all, but an eskimo instead (or, as my grandson kept correcting me, an innuedoite).
See, that's where the F.O.O.W. part comes in. Trinidad, who thought he was a negro, moves from Miami (where it's very hot) to Tolkenta, Alaska (where, I am told, it is very cold). So it's very different for him, and it takes a while for him to get used to things like ice and snow and people with poor dental hygiene. In Alaska, Barbados meets several people, including a very pretty bartender named Barb, that Graham Greene guy who plays an Indian or an eskimo in everything and a very mean gentleman named Lightning Joe, who looks a lot like that Abominable Snowman from that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special Ethel and I watched after we got back from Kate & Leopold. My grandson told me Puerto Rico and the Snowman guy have both won Oscars, but I wasn't at all surprised they were rewarded for such wonderful performances. Michael Bolton is in it, too, and if there's any way he could get an Oscar, he really should.
There are many, many funny parts in Snow Dogs, and most of them involve Haiti being bitten in the fanny or dragged by a pack of dogs (I told you F.O.O.W. stories are the funniest!). The only thing I didn't like was that the dogs didn't talk, like they do in the television commercials. I'm not too sure about the whole thing between Grenada and Barb, either, because I'm pretty sure he's one of them Homersexuals (his friend back in Miami was played by the flamboyant Sisco, who is the man responsible for my mutual fund shrinkage, according to my accountant, Barry). It seems odd for a Disney film, but I guess the world is changing. And I don't want to giveaway the ending, but let's just say it's the best ending since Rudy.
There are some things my grandson insisted I talk about in my review, which seems silly because he slept through most of the movie. The woman who plays Bermuda's mother used to be the Black Woman on Star Trek. Oh, and he kept mumbling something about everything being a ripoff of Northern Exposure, which is only partially true, since Barb only becomes Guyana's fat eskimo secretary (like Marilyn) at the end of the movie. There were other things, too, but he should stay awake and write his own review if he wants to tell his own side of the story.
1:44 - PG for mild crude humor
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
