...a routine, uninspired, paint-by-the-numbers entry in the field of children's cinema.
The rest of the movie is about how Adam finds the pups and they work really hard and they enter the big race. Six tiny pups pitted against full-grown dogsled teams. Keep saying: It's a children's fantasy, it's a children's fantasy.
Also in the cast, for reasons I could never understand, are a St. Bernard named Bernie (James Belushi), who is the Alaskan town deputy sheriff; a legendary old sled dog named Talon (Kris Kristofferson), who lives in the mountains and tutors the pups in sled racing; a tough varmint named Jean George (John Kapelos), who is a rival sled-dog racer and a no-good Nick, a stereotypical villain; and a mean-spirited Siamese cat named Miss Mittens (Whoopi Goldberg), who terrorizes the pups back home. Plus, there's an old coot sheriff, an idiot deputy, an Eskimo (or Inuit to be more correct), an igloo, and a sled full of other clichés.
"Snow Buddies" moves along at the pace of frozen molasses, and it's just as sugary (at least, when it isn't indulging in dog-fart gags). Even the background music is sugary. The filmmakers calculate every scene to be an "ahhhh" moment. And, of course, there are morals everywhere: "Sometimes helping others is the surest way to help yourself" and working together as a team beats selfishly thinking only of yourself.
As I say, for the youngest members of the family, the movie is sure to please. For everyone else, I dunno.
Video:
The colors are exceedingly bright and showy in a high-bit-rate, 1.78:1 ratio, anamorphic transfer. Indeed, the hues are probably too bright for real life, but they seem to fit the cartoonish nature of the film. Even more in the transfer's favor, it treats us to an exceptionally clean screen, the wide expanses of pure-white snow looking just that--pure white--with hardly a trace of print grain or noise. Add in some fairly sharp definition, and you've got a video pleasing to the eye.
Audio:
The first thing a listener notices about the Dolby Digital 5.1 reproduction is a good deal of musical ambience enhancement in the rear channels. Unfortunately, there's little else to commend it, as the soundtrack is mostly bland and homogenized, like the movie. It has plenty of stereo spread, and it's quiet where it should be, but it hasn't much range--dynamic or frequency--or much impact. So, it does only what it has to do and not much more.
Extras:
First up among the disc's bonus materials are about three minutes of staged bloopers, most of which try to outdo the coyly mannered antics of the movie. Following that is an item called "Buddy Bites," a full-length audio commentary by the Buddies that sounds as though the actors were reading from a script. Obviously, the studio was leaving nothing to chance. Then there is a music video, "Lean on Me," by Disney Channel star Mitchel Musso; it's hard to recognize the young man's singing for all the loud accompaniment that surrounds him. And, finally, there are two featurettes: "Dogumentary," seven minutes with the dogs telling us about how they made the film, and "The Magic of Visual Effects," five minutes on, uh, visual effects.
Things wind down with sixteen scene selections and a chapter insert; Sneak Peeks at a dozen other Disney products; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
You ask, How could anybody knock a film so lovable as this one? Well, it took me three hours to get through the film's eighty-seven minutes, not counting the extras, if that tells you anything. I'm sure "Snow Buddies" is just fine if you have five or six-year-olds in the family, but I would not want to be one of the parents who has to watch it with them. It's nearly an hour and a half of terminal cutesiness that for this adult wore out its welcome very fast.
Also in the cast, for reasons I could never understand, are a St. Bernard named Bernie (James Belushi), who is the Alaskan town deputy sheriff; a legendary old sled dog named Talon (Kris Kristofferson), who lives in the mountains and tutors the pups in sled racing; a tough varmint named Jean George (John Kapelos), who is a rival sled-dog racer and a no-good Nick, a stereotypical villain; and a mean-spirited Siamese cat named Miss Mittens (Whoopi Goldberg), who terrorizes the pups back home. Plus, there's an old coot sheriff, an idiot deputy, an Eskimo (or Inuit to be more correct), an igloo, and a sled full of other clichés.
"Snow Buddies" moves along at the pace of frozen molasses, and it's just as sugary (at least, when it isn't indulging in dog-fart gags). Even the background music is sugary. The filmmakers calculate every scene to be an "ahhhh" moment. And, of course, there are morals everywhere: "Sometimes helping others is the surest way to help yourself" and working together as a team beats selfishly thinking only of yourself.
As I say, for the youngest members of the family, the movie is sure to please. For everyone else, I dunno.
Video:
The colors are exceedingly bright and showy in a high-bit-rate, 1.78:1 ratio, anamorphic transfer. Indeed, the hues are probably too bright for real life, but they seem to fit the cartoonish nature of the film. Even more in the transfer's favor, it treats us to an exceptionally clean screen, the wide expanses of pure-white snow looking just that--pure white--with hardly a trace of print grain or noise. Add in some fairly sharp definition, and you've got a video pleasing to the eye.
Audio:
The first thing a listener notices about the Dolby Digital 5.1 reproduction is a good deal of musical ambience enhancement in the rear channels. Unfortunately, there's little else to commend it, as the soundtrack is mostly bland and homogenized, like the movie. It has plenty of stereo spread, and it's quiet where it should be, but it hasn't much range--dynamic or frequency--or much impact. So, it does only what it has to do and not much more.
Extras:
First up among the disc's bonus materials are about three minutes of staged bloopers, most of which try to outdo the coyly mannered antics of the movie. Following that is an item called "Buddy Bites," a full-length audio commentary by the Buddies that sounds as though the actors were reading from a script. Obviously, the studio was leaving nothing to chance. Then there is a music video, "Lean on Me," by Disney Channel star Mitchel Musso; it's hard to recognize the young man's singing for all the loud accompaniment that surrounds him. And, finally, there are two featurettes: "Dogumentary," seven minutes with the dogs telling us about how they made the film, and "The Magic of Visual Effects," five minutes on, uh, visual effects.
Things wind down with sixteen scene selections and a chapter insert; Sneak Peeks at a dozen other Disney products; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
You ask, How could anybody knock a film so lovable as this one? Well, it took me three hours to get through the film's eighty-seven minutes, not counting the extras, if that tells you anything. I'm sure "Snow Buddies" is just fine if you have five or six-year-olds in the family, but I would not want to be one of the parents who has to watch it with them. It's nearly an hour and a half of terminal cutesiness that for this adult wore out its welcome very fast.
Average user rating (1-5):
Not yet rated.
Not yet rated.