Snow Dogs: Strictly for the Pups in the Audience

By Teddy Durgin
tedfilm@aol.com

If you want another talking animal movie like Babe or Cats and Dogs, you're not going to find it with Snow Dogs (new in
theaters Friday, Jan. 18). The commercials and the trailer for this film make it look like Cuba Gooding Jr. is going to be interacting with some chatty pooches. He doesn't. Yes, computer graphics are able to animate the canine actors' faces so they can wink, smile, and even grimace. But the only scene in which the doggies actually talk is a dream sequence that Gooding's character Ted Brooks has when stranded in a snowstorm.

Darn it! I really wanted some talking dawgs! Some people laugh at the Three Stooges. Others swear by the Farrelly Brothers.

Talking hounds get me every time!

WHO KEPT THE DAWGS IN?!

Ugh! I was so in the mood for a talking-dog flick. What I got was an OK substitute, I guess. Snow Dogs is an extremely well-meaning family comedy about a Miami dentist inheriting his birth mother's Alaskan home and dog-sledding team. The film is clearly aimed squarely at the children in the audience, as Ted discovers the importance of family and finding his place in the world.

I will praise Snow Dogs for its high morals and for the fact that there is not a single curse word in it. It has some laughs, some thrills, and some very good intentions. What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is crossover appeal. It's not one of those movies "for the child and the child in all of us" It's just for the child. The first half is especially awkward, as director Brian Levant isn't quite sure whether he wants to make Gooding into a real person in search of his heritage or a human cartoon who slips on every patch of ice and snow he comes in contact with. All the while Gooding contorts his face and overplays wildly.

Seriously, Gooding screams more in this film than Jamie Lee Curtis did in both Halloween films and Prom Night put together! The man screams when he feels cold. He screams when he takes off in a plane, when he's slipping on ice, when he's being chased by dogs, when he's running from a bear, a skunk, a snowdrift. Gooding works in this film. He works hard. Too hard. I think the problem is he and Levant both miscalculated exactly what their target audience would sit still for. It's almost as if the two got together and the conversation went like this:

GOODING: "OK, when the dogs aren't on screen, we really need something to hold the kids' attention. 'Cause there ain't much here."

LEVANT: "I have one word for you, my friend: PRATFALLS!"

Fortunately, Snow Dogs eventually tires of sending Gooding across frozen ponds and down steep embankments and makes a splendid recovery in its second half. Ted starts to come into his own. He has traveled from Miami to Tolketna, Alaska (doubled quite nicely in the film by Canmore, Alberta) after he learns that his biological mother has passed away. Ted's mother (Nichelle Nichols of "Star Trek" fame!) never told him he was adopted. Befuddled and looking for his identity, he intends to stay in Alaska and find out who his real father is. To his amazement, it is the very rugged and very white "Thunder" Jack (James Coburn), a local dog-sledding legend.

Ted also meets Barb, a fetching Eskimo woman played with enough warm to melt a snow bank by Joanna Bacalso. Snow Dogs starts to find its way when Gooding turns down the energy and starts to relate to the other actors. He and Coburn have a lot of fun playing stubborn men who are more alike than unalike. And his chemistry with Bacalso is nicely handled in a PG fashion. The scene that really puts the movie on solid footing is when Ted and Barb share a moment on a moonlit hilltop in which they coax nearby wolves to howl by howling themselves.

But, hey. No one is going to go to this flick for the people. This is a dawg movie! Like I said, the commercials and trailers led me to believe I was gonna get talking dogs. Once I realized that the filmmakers were going the more realistic route, I did my best to get past the old bait and switch. In truth, the audience does learn what it takes to put together a team of sled dogs. And a couple of the featured hounds are real charmers, especially: Nana, Ted's loyal Border Collie; Demon, the angry team leader who hides a sore tooth; and Duchess, a female husky billed in the press notes as "every dog's dream."

Most importantly, I liked how the film respected the animals. As a kid, I hated going to animal movies because I knew that nine times out of 10 at least one animal character was going to die in the film. Snow Dogs never stoops to such manipulation, and I applaud that. At first, I feared the character of Thunder Jack might be a dog abuser, considering his ornery ways. But Jack turns out to be the most respectful of all the characters, even looking down at one rival dog sledder who eats dinner before his animals do.

The problems I have with the film may steam from the fact that the credits list five screenwriters with coming up with the script. My guess is one guy wrote all the pratfalls, another guy wrote the love story, still another handled the bickering father-and-son scenes, a fourth penned the doggie hijinks, and the fifth writer added all the fish-out-of-water goofs.

Too bad these writers couldn't have taken a lesson from Ted's dogs and worked as a team.

Snow Dogs is rated PG for some mild crude humor.

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