Toon Talk: Snow Dogs DVD - May 14, 2002

Toon Talk: Snow Dogs DVD
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Levant doesn’t just fail with his two-legged stars though. Using computer imagery, the dogs are given exaggerated facial expressions (winks, bug-eyes, flittering eyelids) in attempt to generate some sort of comic effect. The result comes off as cheesy and pointless. Dogs are beautiful animals and, unless they are required to talk as in the far superior Babe, no digital trickery will top a well-trained animal actor’s performance.

Just look at Lassie and Old Yeller; they didn’t need it.

BONUS FEATURES:

Ted’s Arctic Challenge Game:
In this DVD game, narrated by seasoned character actor M. Emmett Walsh (who plays Tolketna’s magistrate in the movie), players use the arrows on their remote control to navigate Ted’s snowmobile through rough, wintry terrain to rescue his dogs. Players must answer trivia questions about Snow Dogs for fuel to continue the journey.

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Featurettes:

  • Chillin’ With the Actors: Interviews with the cast (including Gooding, Coburn, Bacalso and Nichols - what, no Sisqo?), on their experiences filming in the frozen north. Director Levant and producer Jordan Kerner are also on hand.
  • Going to the Dogs: The length of this featurette shows how important the animals where to this film: it’s twice as long as the previous one. A lot of the dogs were domesticated and had to be trained on how to pull a sled. Thus they, along with Gooding, attended a ‘sledding school’. Also details the creation of the Jim Henson Creature Shop-produced animatronic doggie doubles used in the filming.
  • Tolketna on Ice: The production designers built from scratch the town of Tolketna at the foot of the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, Canada.

Audio Commentary:
Provided by director Levant and producer Kerner, the commentary often fails to sync up with the images shown; several times they note something “a few minutes back”. This leads to frustration, as you have to back up to see what they were talking about.

The Top Ten Things We Learn From This Commentary:

  1. Snow Dogs is loosely based on a book by Gary Paulson titled Waterdance.
  2. In the original story treatments, Ted was white.
  3. The film was shot on the same location as another Disney movie, Mystery Alaska.
  4. In the scene where the dogs attack Ted in his oversized parka, meat was sewn into the pockets to get them to ‘bite’ him.
  5. From the ‘It Could Have Been Worse’ Department: actual consideration was made on having the dogs talk in the film.
  6. The Arctic Challenge was created for the film as a ‘more humane’ version of the notoriously brutal, real-life Iditarod race.
  7. Impressed with Joanna Bacalso’s moves when she kicks that drunk out of her bar? In real life, she is an expert kick-boxer.
  8. In Ted’s fantasy sequence, the voices of Demon and Nana are provided by Jim Belushi (According to Jim) and Jane Sibbett (Friends).
  9. The cave used in the film will soon be seen again, in the Miramax mini-series A Wrinkle in Time.
  10. No animals were harmed during the filming of this movie: that fancy fur coat that Nichelle Nichols wears is fake.