The Princess Diaries/Snow Dogs

Today we are going to look at the 2001 beloved film, “The Princess Diaries.” Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway’s film debut) lives in a renovated firehouse in San Francisco with her mother Helen (Caroline Goodall), an artist. Her life is completely changed when she finds out that she is the heir to the throne of the small European country of Genovia. “I don’t want to run my own country,” Mia complains. “I just want to pass tenth grade.” However, her grandmother, Queen Clarisse Renaldi, played by Julie Andrews, is convinced that she has everything to make up a princess. Mia has the choice of taking some manner lessons to prepare for an upcoming royal ball. After the ball, she can decide whether or not to accept the throne.

The shy Mia goes through so much confusions and hurdles along the path to the throne, especially at school when Larry Miller tells the press that she’s a princess. Her relationship with Lilly, played by Heather Metarazzo (you might remember her as Heather Wiseman on “Now and Again”), her best friend, is changed completely. A sarcastic makeover artist, played by Miller, says to her: “If Brooke Shields married Groucho Marx, that child would have your eyebrows.” The popular cheerleaders (Mandy Moore, Elizabeth Gudenrath and Bianca Lopez) at the classy school start to take notice of this outcast and Josh (Erik von Detten), the most popular guy in her class, asks her out on a date, much to the alarm of Lilly’s brother Michael (Robert Schwarzman) who has a crush on her. During her “princess lessons,” Joseph, played by Hector Elizondo, Genovia’s head of security, becomes like a friend while chauffeuring Mia around in a limo.

Garry Marshall directs this comedic movie based on a novel by Meg Cabot. The screenplay by Gina Wendkos has so much standard material but stays inspiring in the end. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat said, “All young girls are princesses inside, although many don't know it and some never will. The more movies that let us in on this wonderful secret, the better.”

Now we come to “Snow Dogs,” released in 2002. Maria Garcia started her review by saying, “The "snow dogs" are a group of Alaskan huskies and one border collie who live in Tolketna, Alaska.” They belong to Ted Brooks, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr., a successful Miami dentist, however Ted doesn’t know it yet. When he arrives in Tolketna to get his legacy left to him by his late mother, played by Angela Moore, he is expecting a cabin in the woods. When Ted finds is more than he could have ever imagined. After a huge welcome from alpha dog Demon, Ted gets a few lessons in sledding – from the dogs. He also falls in love (the hot Joanna Bacalso), finds his real father, and learns that he’s a wasteland type of a person. That’s after a few fights with a grizzly bear and the difficult local, Thunder Jack, played by James Coburn.

Garcia said, “Large doses of slapstick humor and Gooding's vitality keep Snow Dogs from slipping into dull "family entertainment." Wisely, director Brian Levant (Beethoven) exploits every convention of a comedy about a city slicker in the wilds of Alaska.” Ted brings the wrong boots and, although constant sub-zero temperatures and a blizzard, ice cracks only when he walks on it. Levant’s fast pace does not completely save the script, sadly, which fails to give one surprise even though five writers put in the effort. Small town characters like Peter Yellowbear, played by Native American Graham Greene, introduced in the first scene, immediately disappear from the story. Garcia said, “There is also a conspicuous lack of children in Tolketna, odd for a film aimed at pre-adolescents.” What saves the movie is that it eventually goes to the dogs.

Coburn and Gooding took sledding lessons for “Snow Dogs,” shot in the Canadian Rockies. That doesn’t matter though about a couple of Academy Award winners? From the beginning, you know those dogs are there to save some uncaring human from a horrible death – and “Snow Dogs” don’t disappoint. So the filmmakers couldn’t accept the dogs’ natural appeal, even in Alaska. Garcia noted, “They hired Jim Henson's puppeteers to make animatronic models that wink!” However, one good sign of progress in this film shouldn’t be mentioned: It shows two interracial relationships, one between its black protagonist and a native Alaskan. Even the dogs deliver a politically correct message. Nana (Jane Sibbett), the Border collie, and Demon (Jim Belushi), the Alaskan husky, make puppies. Who says Disney hasn’t come into the 21^st century?

Sadly, tomorrow we will be looking at more disappointments in “Disney Live-Action Month.”