Movie Thoughts: Toby McTeague (1986)

• Released: 1 March 1986
• Directed by: Jean-Claude Lord
• Running time: 1 h 36 min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A teenager named Toby wants to enter in the provincial dog sledding championships in order to preserve his father's sled dog breeding efforts.

My Thoughts

I've watched this film before but remembered absolutely nothing about it. So I revisited it and this time actually paid attention. What I found was... not great.

The plot is pretty basic. Toby struggles with the loss of his mother and his father is about to lose his dog-sledding business, so things are tough on him. He sees dog sledding as his emotional outlet, but even that goes too far.

The main gripe I have with this movie is with the titular character. Toby is an constant ass throughout this thing. He makes stupid irresponsible bets, he pushes his dogs too far which literally leads to one of them dying, then instead of dealing with the repercussions he runs away during a snowstorm. Then, finally, his father goes looking for him in an airplane and crashes, which could've literally killed him. How is this main character likable if he keeps pushing himself, the people and his dogs just because he's too stubborn to give up? I get that they want him to be a spirited character, but he just comes off as so ungrateful and unlikable in this movie. 

The other characters are pretty much stock characters. You have the nice teacher who's new to town, the hardworking distant father, the precious little brother, the loyal lead dog, the school bully, the best friend, the love interest, the magical native American chief, etc. They're all closer to being tropes than actual characters with development. I guess the only character out of these I kind of liked was the new teacher, but other than that the others were just blank slates or stereotypes.

This was a very basic sled dog movie, but the characters were just too lackluster and Toby too unlikable. I'd have preferred if this had been a story about him learning to take responsibility rather than a "win the race to save the family business" type of plot.