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Video: Mush right past 'Snow Dogs'
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 16, 2002
New releases
Snow Dogs (PG)
[Photo: Walt Disney Pictures]
A Miami dentist (Cuba Gooding Jr.) inherits the world’s greatest team of sled dogs in Snow Dogs.
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A dentist from sunny Miami (Cuba Gooding Jr.) inherits a dogsledding team, then moves to Alaska to train for an Iditarod-style race. Winning will keep the adorable canines from the hands of a craggy, abusive mountain man (James Coburn). Typical Disney fluff with just enough material to make a decent preview trailer. Once the tickets are sold, who cares?
First impressions: "It's not that we would expect much from director Brian Levant after such misfires as The Flintstones and Jingle All the Way. And five screenwriters are credited with the cliche-laden screenplay; it seems as if each watered down the version of the one before. What we're left with is a slapstick comedy that only young children are bound to enjoy. Adults will likely be disappointed that talented actors Cuba Gooding Jr. and James Coburn (both Oscar winners, no less) couldn't raise this movie to a higher level." (Claudia Puig, USA Today)
Second thoughts: A surprising $80-million hit at box offices, proving how desperate Americans were for entertainment after Sept. 11.
Rental audience: Children in need of video babysitting.
Rent it if you enjoy: Showing Gooding more money than slumming like this deserves.
Corky Romano (PG-13)
Saturday Night Live comedian Chris Kattan takes his third strike at the movies after A Night at the Roxbury and Monkeybone. He plays the clumsy son of a mobster (Peter Falk) who poses as an FBI agent to gain access to evidence in a racketeering case. Of course, he turns out to be the best G-man in the agency, leading to a showdown with his criminal relatives.
First impressions: "Corky Romano is like a dead zone of comedy. The concept is exhausted, the ideas are tired, the physical gags are routine, the story is labored, the actors look like they can barely contain their doubts about the project." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)
Second thoughts: Boy, I'm glad I skipped this one.
Rental audience: Fans of Mango, Azriel Abyss and Mr. Peepers, Kattan's best characters on Saturday Night Live.
Rent it if you enjoy: Touching your tongue to frozen metal poles.
DVD
New and noteworthy for digital players
Cool off with these chillers
Whether you take your horror rare, with plenty of tawdriness and gore, or you prefer a more subtle recipe that stirs hairs at the back of your neck, prepare to shiver.
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Two distinctly different horror movies reach video shelves this week, each finding different ways to get under our collective skin. From Hell is the most overtly grotesque choice, a stylish dramatization of Jack the Ripper's bloody swath through London. Alejandro Amenabar's The Others is the more ambitious offering, relying more on mood and primal dread than any gory special effects.
From Hell was a remarkable assignment for Allen and Albert Hughes, twin African-American brothers more inclined to down-and-dirty street dramas such as Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. Making a movie about lily-white London in the 19th century was a stretch they managed with lurid vitality, finding the same drugs, debauchery and doom on ye olde mean streets.
Johnny Depp stars as Inspector Fred Abberline, trailing the Ripper through the bawdy Whitechapel district where prostitutes are targets. Heather Graham (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me) plays golden-hearted hooker Mary Kelly who, according to Abberline's absinthe-and-opium dreams, may be the next victim.
The 2-disc DVD version contains a behind-the-scenes documentary previously aired on HBO, plus several other featurettes shot on location, with the Hughes brothers touring shooting locations and the real Ripper's slashing grounds, a hint of the set's macabre tone. Twenty-three deleted scenes including a mercifully discarded alternate ending are included, plus storyboards, a photo gallery and an interactive documentary on Jack the Ripper's case.
Like the movie it showcases, The Others on DVD is a more subdued presentation without many frills except one eerie extra.
Nicole Kidman's best performance last year wasn't Moulin Rouge but this effective ghost story. She plays Grace, a war widow it seems, living with two small children in a Shining-time mansion. Grace hears voices and is prone to defensive snits about motherhood, yet her devotion to the children -- who are hypersensitive to light -- appears beyond reproach. A new set of servants brings Grace's persona into devastating focus, without any of the usual shocks and gore.
The DVD is standard stuff: another "making-of" documentary and a profile of Almenabar, whose previous art-house hit Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) was remade as Vanilla Sky, which debuts on home video next week. A photo gallery is fine, and a short feature on the film's special effects confirms how little they meant to the chief terror of the story.
The best bonus is a short documentary on a family whose children have been diagnosed with xeroderma pigmentosum, the disease Grace claims her children have contracted. Without the background information, their aversion to light seems like dramatic license, but the medical and psychological realities depicted in that featurette make the movie spookier.
Rewind
Videos worth another look
Who isn't fond of Henry?
In honor of Henry Fonda's birthday, renew your faith in human decency and fine acting by watching one of his films.
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Henry Fonda was fond of saying: "I ain't really Henry Fonda. Nobody could have that much integrity." Sounds like typical Midwestern modesty from the late actor, but he has a point.
Fonda's characters almost always chose the straight and narrow, speaking their minds and searching them before doing it. He made Abe Lincoln seem more honest and Mister Roberts appear less mutinous, all with an effortless style that could make anything believable unless it was one of his rare bad-guy roles. Some actors carry a message on screen with them. Fonda's was sincerity.
Henry Fonda was born on this date in 1905 and died in 1982, a few months after his last role in On Golden Pond finally earned him an Academy Award as best actor. That bittersweet farewell and any of these other Fonda classics are good ways to remember a great actor:
Young Mr. Lincoln -- John Ford's stirring account of the early life of our 16th president as a backwoods attorney. Fonda shows the genesis of a statesman with malice toward none and compassion for all, even a lynch mob.
The Grapes of Wrath -- Fonda's role as Tom Joad became the cinematic archetype of Great Depression victims, optimistic against the odds yet steadfastly patriotic in failure. Whenever historians discuss America's resolve during crises, he'll be there.
Jezebel -- Fonda's appeal was partly built on roles calling for nice guys getting pushed around. Nobody shoves like Bette Davis, tart-tongued and torrid as a Southern belle making her intended husband (Fonda) look foolish.
The Lady Eve -- Fonda's comedy instincts are in top form as a herpetologist duped by a con artist (Barbara Stanwyck) in a screwball comedy from director Preston Sturges. A vintage example of pratfalling into love.
The Ox-Bow Incident -- Another lynch mob, this time with Fonda helping to tie the noose. Accused cattle thieves are ready to be executed unless someone fair and upright comes along seeking justice. Guess who?
My Darling Clementine -- Fonda plays fabled lawman Wyatt Earp in John Ford's sweeping rendition of the gunfight at the OK Corral. Victor Mature makes the second-best Doc Holliday ever after Tombstone's Val Kilmer.
Mister Roberts -- Rough sailing aboard a Navy ship commanded by a tyrannical captain (James Cagney). Fonda recreated his Tony-winning title role as a bristling buffer, and Jack Lemmon was named best supporting actor as Ensign Pulver, the subject of a sequel.
The Wrong Man -- An innocent musician (Fonda) is mistaken for a insurance company robber in a thriller by Alfred Hitchcock based on a true story. Nice guys always squirm best.
Spencer's Mountain -- A personal favorite, and the inspiration for The Waltons on TV. Fonda plays a flawed rural patriarch with a doting wife (Maureen O'Hara) and ambitious son (James MacArthur) among his brood. A feel-good movie the way they don't make 'em anymore. Watch out for that tree, Grandpa.
Once Upon a Time in the West -- We must toss in Fonda's best role as a villain, a cold-blooded killer of anything that moves, even an unarmed boy, in Sergio Leone's sprawling spaghetti Western.
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