...a routine, uninspired, paint-by-the-numbers entry in the field of children's cinema.
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As you may know, even though Disney has always been a family oriented studio, they decided about year or so ago to pursue the family market even more vigorously than before. As a result we have seen an upswing in the number of Disney Channel specials, teen witches, "High School Musicals," and Hanna Montana episodes to hit DVD.
The "however" of this scenario is that their definition of "family" pictures is not exactly the same as my definition. When I think of family pictures, I think of movies the whole family, young and old, can enjoy equally, movies like "Snow White," "Mary Poppins," and "The Chronicles of Narnia." But it appears that Disney's idea of "family" is to target specific younger age groups, like early grade-school boys or preteen girls. Put 2008's direct-to-video "Snow Buddies" in the very youngest "youngsters" category.
Written and directed by Robert Vince, "Snow Buddies" is a live-action adventure sequel to "Air Buddies" (2006), a distant relation to the "Air Bud" series (1997, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003), and a stepping stone to "Space Buddies" (2008). Do you detect a pattern here?
The Disney folks have clearly aimed the "Buddies" pictures at the juvenile set, and in that regard they probably work just fine. But I'm an adult, and I cannot guess how any child will react a movie; therefore, I will continue to review and rate such films from my own point of view; or, rather, from the point of view of an adult looking at these new releases in the context of previous Disney family classics. In that regard, "Snow Buddies" seems pretty much like a routine, uninspired, paint-by-the-numbers entry in the field of children's cinema.
The story involves five golden retriever pups, the "Buddies" of the title, whose father was "Buddy" from the first "Air Bud." The dogs now live with five different families in an idealized little town in Washington, where a sign reads "Welcome to Fernfield, Where Everything Is Possible." I expect that is to remind that this is going to be a fantasy.
The first thing to which the movie introduces us is each of the pups and their owners, and then the two parent dogs. The animals, played for the most part by real-life dogs with some CGI manipulation, speak to one another in English but not very convincingly, hardly moving their lips in doing so and showing little or no expression. The pups are Mudbud (voiced by Henry Hodges), owned by a middle-of-the-road type kid; Buddha (Jimmy Bennett), owned by a transcendental meditating kid; Rosebud (Liliana Mumy), owned by a little girl; Budderball (Josh Flitter), owned by a rich kid; and B-Dawg (Skyler Gisondo), owned by an athletic, Dude-talking kid. Each dog takes after its owner, and if I heard one more "Dude" from any of them, I think I'd scream. Tom Everett Scott and Molly Shannon voice the two parent dogs, Buddy and Molly.
The pups are amazingly cute. The kids are amazingly cute. The movie is amazingly cute. I was cute'd out in the first ten minutes. When the kids go off to school, they leave each of the pups on a front lawn to run freely around the town. I hope the filmmakers didn't intend this to be a life lesson for youngsters to let their own puppies roam free. It's an invitation to disaster.
Mostly, the pups chase after cats and after one another, scampering around before the movie's far-fetched central conflict kicks in. You see, the pups climb into an ice-cream truck's refrigerated container in search of treats, and the ice-cream man drives it to the airport and to an airplane bound for Alaska, where the pilot unceremoniously dumps it from the plane via parachute into the deep woods. What are the odds? OK, it's a children's fantasy. The movie shows the container with the pups inside hurtling down through space and tumbling every which way before the chute opens, all the while cutting to the pups inside who are not being jostled at all. Did anyone think of editing this thing?
Once safely in Alaska, we meet the main human character in the film, a (cute) little boy named Adam Bilson (Dominic Scott Kay), who wears his hair longer than his mother's. Do real little kids really still wear their hair shaggy long to their shoulders, or is it only in the movies to make them look even cuter? In any case, Adam dreams one day of entering a local sled-dog race, but he's only got one dog, a pup named Shasta (Dylan Sprouse). He desperately needs five more dogs and prays (literally) to get the dogs he needs. And the pups fall from heaven.
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