- Released: February 5 2008
- Directed by: Robert Vince
- Running time: 1 h 27 min
- Rating 1.5/5
Synopsis
The Buddies find themselves transported to the cold north and must partake in a sled dog race in order to get back home.
My Thoughts
So, yeah, not the most original story. I honestly don’t mind most of these dog sledding movies ending up with a race as final conflict, but it’s the part that gets us towards the race that can be executed in an interesting way. Unfortunately here, it is not. The plot feels needlessly forced. How do the pups end up on the plane? Oh, because of Plot and nothing else. How are they able to enter the race despite Adam technically not being allowed? Because the sheriff is needlessly goofy because Plot. The story just doesn’t feel genuine. It doesn’t feel like it wanted to tell a heartwarming story, it feels like they just wanted to get it done quick and let it be over soon.
Another example of how soulless it feels sometimes is when Shasta meets Talon, an old and possibly-supernatural Malamute and legendary sled dog racer. Talon also taught Shasta’s late father, and now they meet up the first time after his death. Shasta has to convince Talon to teach him and the Buddies to race. This has the potential for a very heartwarming scene, where Shasta can connect to Talon over the loss of his father. But instead of that, we just get some dry questions that amount to. “Will you teach us?” “No.” “Oh, by the way, I am Nanuk’s son.” “Oh right I’ll train you.” There’s no soul to it. It just feels disingenuous, and honestly this touching moment could just write itself.
Ah well, how are the characters? Very one-dimensional. If you’re familiar with the Buddies, you probably know that each of their personalities boil down to one or two traits at most. B-Dawg talks in slang and is the scared-y cat. Mudbud only wants to be dirty. Buddha is the spiritual one. Budderball is the fat one.
And Rosebud is Girl, of course. Can’t have a main squad without Girl. She’s supposed to be the strong female and somewhat of a group leader, but in reality she only has a couple of moments where she shows these traits, and they’re so brief they’re easily glossed over. Shasta is the one who has the most growth in Snow Buddies, and honestly he’s the only slightly interesting one of the pups. He has the past he has to face as he wants to complete the race that took his parents’ lives. Adam is just your generic kid who wants to follow his dream, not too much to him. But the bond between him and Shasta was one of the better things of the movie, I’ll give it that. Talon is the old wise teacher, but he really doesn’t do much other than spouting some dialogue about destiny and spirits and then vanishing into aurora borealis. There’s more characters in this film, such as the Buddies’ parents, Saint Berny and others, but they’re all very one-note (even more so than the Buddies). I also really hated the new sheriff of Fernfield they got in this movie. He’s so needlessly over the top goofy and feels so forced. I kinda pity the actor that played him, it didn’t look like he was having a good time playing this role.
So the characters aren’t much. What else is there? Let’s talk about the visuals. They kinda stink. Okay, first of all, all day and night scenes look the same. You could take any day/night scene from the movie and put them beside another day/night scene and they’d look like they were the same scene. The movie also recycles shots needlessly (particularly the one with Talon), which makes it feel really cheap. The same-scene feel of the lighting and colors also could’ve easily been avoided by just applying the tiniest overlay or filter, but they didn’t, making it feel very stale. As for the CGI, it looks horribly cheap. The mouths on the dogs look okay at most, but creepy and uncanny at worst. There’s also the additional CGI they used for some comedic scenes, which really just does not work. It looks like they had the budget of a bag of potatoes and just looks bad.
The soundtrack was okay, I’ll give it that.
As for the pacing, it wasn’t perfect, but not horrible, either.
The voice acting was something that did bother me. Some of the deliveries feel like they weren’t the best. It also doesn’t help that the Buddies and Shasta all have incredibly similar sounding voices. The human acting was eh, though, again, the Fernfield Sheriff was so horribly over the top it made me want to look away.
Something else that was bothersome was that the dogs seem to have no consistent age. They shrink and grow across the many scenes, which is rather annoying.
Also, when they come across what they think to be wolves in this movie the first thing they do is run. Which seems to completely forget the first Buddies installment where Rosebud stood up to one without even shaking.
The humor is very childish. Budderball is usually the subject of “comedy” in this film, with the fart and fat jokes with him persisting. There’s also the Fernfield sheriff… Oh boy.
Finally I’d like to touch on something else about this movie. Trigger warning for animal death in this paragraph. Yeah, the behind-the-scenes story for this film isn’t pretty. Pups fell ill and some even had to be put down due or died. I’m not aware of the precise details, but the fact that actual pups suffered and died during the process of this film is far from pretty. (Source).
When we put the horrible things that happened to the pups behind the scenes aside, Snow Buddies by itself feels like a soulless movie. With bad CGI, forced writing that mostly lacks feelings and characters that have two personality traits at most. It’s just a dull movie that feels cheap. And, not looking past it, actual puppies on behind the scenes died. Poor animals…
Unless you’re really into sled dog movies and don’t want to subject yourself to better examples of the genre, I’d say skip this one. The only real thing that slightly made me like it is Shasta and his bond to Adam, but the rest is just bad. Skip it.
So the characters aren’t much. What else is there? Let’s talk about the visuals. They kinda stink. Okay, first of all, all day and night scenes look the same. You could take any day/night scene from the movie and put them beside another day/night scene and they’d look like they were the same scene. The movie also recycles shots needlessly (particularly the one with Talon), which makes it feel really cheap. The same-scene feel of the lighting and colors also could’ve easily been avoided by just applying the tiniest overlay or filter, but they didn’t, making it feel very stale. As for the CGI, it looks horribly cheap. The mouths on the dogs look okay at most, but creepy and uncanny at worst. There’s also the additional CGI they used for some comedic scenes, which really just does not work. It looks like they had the budget of a bag of potatoes and just looks bad.
The soundtrack was okay, I’ll give it that.
As for the pacing, it wasn’t perfect, but not horrible, either.
The voice acting was something that did bother me. Some of the deliveries feel like they weren’t the best. It also doesn’t help that the Buddies and Shasta all have incredibly similar sounding voices. The human acting was eh, though, again, the Fernfield Sheriff was so horribly over the top it made me want to look away.
Something else that was bothersome was that the dogs seem to have no consistent age. They shrink and grow across the many scenes, which is rather annoying.
Also, when they come across what they think to be wolves in this movie the first thing they do is run. Which seems to completely forget the first Buddies installment where Rosebud stood up to one without even shaking.
The humor is very childish. Budderball is usually the subject of “comedy” in this film, with the fart and fat jokes with him persisting. There’s also the Fernfield sheriff… Oh boy.
Finally I’d like to touch on something else about this movie. Trigger warning for animal death in this paragraph. Yeah, the behind-the-scenes story for this film isn’t pretty. Pups fell ill and some even had to be put down due or died. I’m not aware of the precise details, but the fact that actual pups suffered and died during the process of this film is far from pretty. (Source).
When we put the horrible things that happened to the pups behind the scenes aside, Snow Buddies by itself feels like a soulless movie. With bad CGI, forced writing that mostly lacks feelings and characters that have two personality traits at most. It’s just a dull movie that feels cheap. And, not looking past it, actual puppies on behind the scenes died. Poor animals…
Unless you’re really into sled dog movies and don’t want to subject yourself to better examples of the genre, I’d say skip this one. The only real thing that slightly made me like it is Shasta and his bond to Adam, but the rest is just bad. Skip it.
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