If Snow Dogs had been called Black Men Can't Mush or African-Americans Don't Belong In Alaska probably somebody (you out there Jesse Jackson) would have been down Disney's throats wondering why they were marketing a reprehensibly racist movie whose only source of humor is a black man falling down in the snow. So points for Disney's marketing department in both giving this one an innocent title and running a smashing ad campaign that turned Snow Dogs into an minor smash earlier this year. It must have been the poster in which grinning Cuba Gooding Jr. is surrounded by indistinguishably grinning dogs. Apparently, America likes watching black men slip on ice.

I would say that Cuba Gooding Jr. should be ashamed to be involved with a movie of this calibre, but his track record since winning an Oscar for Jerry Maguire has been a pathetic string of vehicles that accentuated only his ability to mug for the camera and not the intelligent charisma that he brought to Maguire and Boyz In The Hood. Any potential that the actor had has been frittered away on projects that a wild chimp would have been smart enough to decorate with feces. While you can sortta understand what Cuba saw in Instinct or Men of Honor (working with fellow Oscar-winners like Anthony Hopkins and Robert DeNiro is sometimes a good idea), films like Chill Factor and Boat Trip (his hopefully never-to-be-released gay cruise comedy) should never have even been contemplated. While people make jokes about the "Best Supporting Actress" curse that jeopardized the careers of Marisa Tomei, Mercedes Ruehl, and Mira Sorvino, none of those actresses frittered away the cache from their golden statues as swiftly as Cuba Gooding Jr..

Snow Dogs again brings Gooding Jr. together with a fellow Oscar winner, this time James Coburn. Coburn passed away on November 18 and his final released film, The Man From Elysian Fields is currently in theatres. However, the audience that sees that well-received indie in its entire run will be thousands of people fewer than saw Snow Dogs on its first Friday in release. So for the vast majority of us, Snow Dogs is a last farewell to James Coburn. How sad is that? The star of The Magnificent Seven, Our Man Flint and Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid rides off into the sunset dragged by a pack of computer-enhanced huskies. Ugh.

But it's Coburn and only Coburn who makes Snow Dogs watchable. The booming voice, rakish eyes, and toothy smile are only slightly defaced by the material.

Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Ted Brooks, a Miami dentist and son of another Miami dentist. Ted's beaming visage is on buses throughout the city and his practice is a wild success, allowing him to employ a talentless assistant (played by the talentless Sisquo, who seems lost in a world without thongs). But there are strange things about Ted. For one thing, he loves Michael Bolton (a joke the filmmakers think keeps getting funnier the more you repeat it because, you see, black men shouldn't like Michael Bolton). For another thing, he loves bleu cheese (is the anti-bleu cheese faction of the African-American community so strong?). And he wonders why he's a dentist.

But an answer comes in the form of a subpoena, calling him to Tolketna, Alaska for the reading of a will. After nearly passing out, his mother admits that Ted was adopted. Because, you know, that's how it goes — babies from way rural Alaska are always adopted by families in Florida. At this point, Sisquo's dental assistant makes a joke about Alaska not being a haven for black people. That's just to clue you in so that you'll be hip to all of the sophisticated humor of the rest of the piece.

Off Ted goes to Alaska where almost immediately, he starts slipping, sliding, falling down, and screaming. So much screaming. The wind makes him scream. The small puddle-jumper he has to take to Tolketna makes him scream and don't you know his inheritance is gonna make him scream.

The will is read by M. Emmett Walsh (poor M. Emmett Walsh) at a bar in Tolketna. Little trinkets go to the likes of Graham Greene (poor Graham Greene) and Brian Doyle-Murray (Brian Doyle-Murray ). And to the amusement of the crowd, the will leaves "my outhouse and all its contents" to craggy mountain-man Thunder Jack (Coburn). But the rest of the woman's estate goes to Ted. Well, Ted just wants to take polaroids of everything and get outta town. despite the flirting of totally un-developed bar wench Barb (Joanna Bacalso). Then he discovers that among his new possessions are a pack of racing huskies, led by the slightly vicious Demon. Ted hates dogs, and well he should, considering that like everything else in the movie, they make him fall down and scream. But things get complicated first when Thunder Jack tries to buy the dogs and then, most importantly, when Barb reveals to Ted that Thunder Jack is actually his father.

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention... In addition to the hilarity produced by the sight gag of Cuba Gooding Jr. in Alaska, his dad is WHITE! Oh, the hits just keep on comin'! Now if only Michael Bolton would just make a cameo! Oh. Wait. He does? Oh. Wait. You mean, he'd play at your kid's bar mitzvah these days if you offered to let him take the leftover cookies home for his family? Hi-larious!

So Ted and Thunder Jack have some father-son catchin' up to do. But the father is a salty old dog and the son is afraid of dogs. Can Thunder Jack learn to open up? Can Ted learn to control a sled team? Will there be a big dog race as a sub-plot totally devoid of suspense? Oh yeah!

But mostly, all of these piddling plot details are secondary to Cuba Gooding Jr. bugging his eyes out, screaming, and falling down. If those three things sound great to you, perhaps Snow Dogs will be your dream rental.

Amazingly, Snow Dogs has five *credited* screenwriters. Usually that kind of committee brilliance goes on behind the scenes and then the Writer's Guild of America figures out who was responsible for the majority of the creative ideas up on screen. In a case like this, however, the writers (Jim Kouf, Tom Swerdlow, Michael Goldberg, Mark Gibson, and Phillip Halprin) must have thought it best to divy up the blame. The biggest loser here may be Gary Paulsen, whose book Winterdance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod is credited for suggesting this mess. Somewhere, Paulsen's probably muttering, "I suggested no such thing."

[Also, here's a question: How many of you hide things in picture frames behind pictures? Not many, I'd guess. Then why do screenwriters insist upon continually trotting out the "Ooops, I dropped your picture, oh look, there was another picture behind the first picture" device? Horrible.]

So what we have here is a bunch of white guys sitting in a room thinking of scenarios in which to humiliate a black actor ("Duh, what if we made him get squirted by a skunk?" "That'd be so great, but how would we tie that into the plot?" "Dude, who cares... A skunk!"). Anybody got a problem with this? Especially since they couldn't be bothered to give any character in the movie even slightly human characteristics. The dogs are vastly more sympathetic than the people and even that is because their facial expressions have been amplified by computers in post-production. It's all a cheat.

Director Brian Levant obvious got this job because he also directed Beethoven and My Dog Skip, but in Hollywood is being the director of dog movies really such a great niche at some point? Especially since Ed Begley Jr. just remade The Shaggy Dog less than ten years ago. Levant and director of photography Tom Ackerman manage to strip the locations of all specificity as well. Tolketna is an Alaskan über-village in the heart of the mountains where none of the locals know how to brush their teeth. The beauty is very much of a, "Yawn, that was pretty" manner as opposed to "Holy Cow, honey, let's grab the dog and go to Alaska." That's just as well, since the movie was actually shot in Alberta, because, well, who really cares? It's difficult to tell where real location shooting ends and sets and matte art begin, because certainly the Northern Lights are fake as is everything in a scene where Cuba goes careering (Looney Tunes style) down a hill, off a cliff, and through some trees before ending up on an obviously fake lake where, for no reason, the ice starts cracking.

While I often feel sorry for actors in subpar material, I've rarely felt quite so embarrassed for an actor as I feel for Cuba Gooding Jr. in Snow Dogs. He's stuck doing uninspired physical comedy out in the cold. His performance is so over-the-top that it loops back around and becomes understated again. That is to say that after a while, I totally forgot I was watching Cuba Gooding Jr.. In fact, I forgot I was watching a human professional actor. And then I started feeling better about the movie.

Graham Greene, M. Emmett Walsh, and Brian Doyle Murray pick up pay checks and I'm always sympathetic to the fact that actors need to eat too. And while I don't know who Joanna Bacalso is, she's appealing as eye-candy. I also think it's cute how totally identity-free her character is. Basically, she's there only to flirt with Cuba Gooding Jr. and she's willing to give up all individuality to be with him. A great lesson for the kids who will force their parents to buy this movie in large amounts.

But I *dare* you not to get misty-eyed when James Coburn looks down at Demon and says to the dog, "This is gonna be my last go round. Let's just say we give 'em something to remember us by." Sure, that just would have been trite dialogue two weeks ago, but now it's touching as all get out. Coburn was all about commanding the screen with his unique charm and even all bundled up, he's in charge here.

Parents are probably protesting, "But my kids like Snow Dogs and it's a movie without violence, swearing, or sex." Granted. It's also very supportive of orphans and of orphans both finding out about their biological roots while still recognizing that the people who loved them and cared for them are also their parents. The movie's about loving animals and about hating the French (there's an evil sled-driver who doesn't have a part, but is still derided). But there's an important distinction between celebrating diversity and poking fun and difference. Snow Dogs is about the latter, rather than the former. No, the director, writers, and stars didn't set out to make a racist movie, but they did. And then they compounded that by making a racist movie that's also woefully humor-less.

R.I.P. James Coburn. I'll try to forget you ever made this movie. Still, the extra star here is for you.

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