Snow Dogs on DVD

Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a fish out of water in this gentle comedy from Walt Disney Pictures.

He's Ted Brooks, a very successful Florida dentist who suddenly learns he's adopted, via notification that his birth mother has died and left him most of her worldly possessions.

Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for the audience, those possessions are in a tiny Alaskan town of Tolketna, and that turns out to be the water that he's the fish out of. It's a beautiful area (shot in Alberta, Canada, about an hour from where TechnoFILE is based) populated, as you might expect, by colorful characters including the mysterious and crusty mountain man Thunder Jack (James Coburn) - who has a secret that Ted really wants to learn.

It's that secret that keeps Ted in Tolketna, and while he's working on Thunder Jack to wriggle it out of him he also starts learning how to handle the prize-winning sled dogs he inherited. Along the way he learns the secret and experiences personal growth - and gains an appreciation for some of the finer things in life he never knew he was missing.

The movie's pretty good for the first hour and a bit, but the last fifteen minutes or so get tiresomely predictable and saccharine. It isn't enough to ruin your enjoyment of Snow Dogs, but it's close…

On the whole, it's an enjoyable hour and a half in the home theater, with a story parents can watch with the kids. The locations are gorgeous, the situations lighthearted and, for the most part, fairly believable and funny. It's actually a lot better than we expected, even with the weaknesses noted above.

Gooding Jr. is as likeable in his role as you'd expect, and he carries the movie very well. Coburn's character is a bit of a change of pace for him, but he also pulls it off well. And we were pleased to see Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from "Star Trek") cast as Ted's adoptive mother - and she's very good.

Also on hand are Joanna Bacalso as Ted's Alaska friend and mentor, veteran character actor M. Emmett Walsh, and Graham Greene.

The DVD, alas, is offered with Pan&Scan video and while the picture quality is very good it's a shame to see the glorious vistas of Snow Dogs cut down to fit a 4x3 TV set - and owners of 16x9 TV's will have to stretch or zoom the picture to fill the screen, lest they risk burning in the side bars that 4x3 pictures leave on the screen when shown in their native aspect ratio.

Audio is another matter. It's offered in both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, and the quality is very good, indeed.

Extras include a running audio commentary with director Brian Levant and producer Jordan Kerner. You also get some deleted and extended scenes, "Ted's Arctic Challenge" game, and three featurettes about the making of the film and the challenges the cast and crew faced filming in the cold of winter.

Snow Dogs, from Walt Disney Home Entertainment,
99 min. Pan&Scan (not 16x9 TV compatible), DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio
Starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., James Coburn
Produced by Jordan Kerner
Written by Jim Kouf and Tommy Swerdlow & Michael Goldberg and Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin, Directed by Brian Levant

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