docnixon

Awful. But I clearly am in the minority here, judging by the gasps & tears around me. I can sum up why I found it nearly unbearable in one word: Disneyfication! Okay, the animals can't talk but damned close to it: There's a scene where Maya, the kindly mommy-dog of the pack, gives each dog succinct instructions (including the command to stay put for the youngster) for complex surround & kill first seagull hunt — all with bark & yip intonations. Each pack member kind of nods & follows their marching orders perfectly. In every scene the animals are humanized. Huskies, known to just shockingly rip up & devour their meals, here pick at their frozen fish, dead seagull, or rotting whale with genteel good manners. They mourn their dead to the point of self-destruction. They share. These dogs aren't just humans, they're idealized humans. Nature is demeaned by being so romantically humanized. Young viewers are seriously miseducated. There has been a trend recently toward making mostly honest "nature in the raw" flics of great beauty — The March of the Penguins, Winged Migration — but it seems to have passed by Disney studios without raising a tuft of fur. The sled dogs, even after a whole winter on their own fighting for survival, remain as well- groomed as any "first in show" pampered pet. The rest of the overwhelming Disneyfication is mainly to do with stereotypes & perfectly predictable plots. The background music, too, denatures us; it refused to stay in background but trumpeted or marched up loudly over any emotion of our own we might feel. At no time can any person's or dog's breath be seen: This is Antarctica, remember? It's, like, cold! No mist in the clear air & the only thing whiter than the landscape are the blinding Hollywood teeth. The plot is entirely predictable, to the point I found myself wishing for an out-&-out dogfight to the death. Paul Walker as the lantern-jawed hero has a fixation for dogs his psychiatrist might worry about. He has nary a weak, nasty, erotic, hesitant, or lazy emotion in his unflappable 2- dimensional hero brain. Jason Biggs is apparently thrown in as comic relief to be his clichéd sidekick, goofing along in long johns, airsickness, & dog slobber. Still I gave it three stars since the scenery was generally so nice.

Hey it's a dumb flic. Sheer sexploitation. But, hell, what a lot of B (or Z-) movie fun! Horny as all get out, early on. Exemplary drug use. Plot? It exists! Much tongue-in-cheek melodrama so it can be enjoyed with plenty of (wink-wink) tolerance. Just stop thinking & enjoy the great bods, fine coke, & a really dumb, if gross, party.

A person need not always be educated by a movie. Sometimes a flic set in an impossible era with impossible events but lots of gross-out, good raunchy sex, & laugh-out-loud action is just what the doctor ordered. Grade B bliss, man!

I recommend this for anyone with a good strong sense of irony. The Asian appearing bad girl is good enough reason to see it several times, until she loses her heart! And, in all fairness, the dude who plays the lead baddie is really an accomplished actor with range & expression (the only one in this nonprofessional piece).

Okay, this is a "B" flic at least, but I have a lot of fun with B flics. This one, however (despite the convoluted plot) was not laughable. Of course I rented it for the thrills promised, but as usual the S&M were only hinted at. Dumb plot. Still, this movie had *something* you would never see in a mainstream movie: In mainstream movies, everyone turns out to be just who who you thought they were - just who they appear to be - though they may have been led temporarily astray. In this flic, like many forgettable B flics, the characters actually are obsessed or driven by forces that do not reveal themselves in persona, or what is said on the service. The fact that who think is the lead character is not the real lead character is quite a move. The stereotypical victim has been in control all the time of all the action, including the sexual-violent action. Underneath it all this character is not really "good" waiting to be saved by manly heroism. This is real, & refreshing. Too bad we still have the cliche of retribution.