Archives: A
- E F - N O
- Z Posters Who
We Are and Why We Do What We Do
BLU-RAY DVDs
Batman Begins
Black Hawk Down
Blade Runner
Casino Royale
Dark Knight
District Nine
Defiance
Fast and Furious
Fast and Furious movies set
Fifth Element
The Hangover
Incredible HULK
Inglorious Basterds
Iron Man
Kill Bill 1 & 2
James Bond Ultimate ed v1James Bond Ultimate ed v2James Bond Ultimate ed v3
Julie & Julia
Moon
Public Enemies
Rambo box set
Silence of the Lambs
Sin City
This is Spinal Tap
Terminator
Terminator Salvation
Terminator 2
Top Gun
Total Recall
300
Transformers: Revenge of Fallen
Ultimate Matrix coll
Twilight
Underworld
Watchmen (dir cut)
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Wolverine
BLU-Ray for family DVDs
Bolt
A Bug's Life
Cars
Chronicles of Narnia set
Coraline
Ghostbusters
Harry Potter & Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Order of Phoenix
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
Ice Age/Alvin + Chipmunks set
The Incredibles
Jungle Book
Juno
Kung Fu Panda
Monsters Inc
Nightmare Before Xmas
101 Dalmatians
Pinocchio
Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
Pixar short films
Ratatouille
Santa Clause
Santa Clause 2
Sleeping Beauty
Spiderwick Chronicles
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White & 7 Dwarfs
Star Trek motion pictures set
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (1-3)
Star Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Transformers SE
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE
We're Kidlet Safe
Search engine
by FreeFind
click to search site
Now in Release:
Alice in Wonderland
An Education
Avatar
Blind Side, the
Brooklyn's Finest
Green Zone
How to Train Your Dragon
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Proposal
Red Clif
She's Out of My League
A Single Man
Waking Sleeping Beauty
DVDs on Sale:
An American in Paris
Batman
Begins
Blade
Runner
Blind Side
The Dark Knight
Day the Earth Stood Still
Die Hard collection 1-4
District Nine
Forrest
Gump
Gone
With the Wind
The Hangover
Indiana
Jones trilogy
Inglorious Basterds
Lord
of Rings trilogy
Ultimate
Matrix set
Monty
Python - Holy Grail
Moon
South
Park Movie
Star
Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star
Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Terminator Salvation
Up
Wall-E
Watchmen - Ultimate cut
Woodstock
X-Men
Trilogy
X-Men Origins Wolverine
DisneyPixar/family DVDs
Alice
in Wonderland
Bambi
Beauty
and the Beast
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Bolt
Cinderella
Coraline
E.T.
Harry
Potter yrs 1-4 set
Harry Potter
& Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
& Order of Phoenix
Kung Fu Panda
The
Lion King
Mary
Poppins 45th LE
Pinocchio
Ratatouille
Shrek Trilogy
Simpsons Movie
Spider-Man Trilogy
Star Trek movies set
Star
Trek TOS (TV)
ST:TNG complete tv set
Star Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star
Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE
Looney
Toons
Golden Age DVD
Volume
1
Volume
2
Volume
3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Rocky & Bullwinkle DVD
Season
1
Season
2
Season
3
Popeye the Sailor DVD
v.1 1933 - 1938
v.2 1938 - 1940
v.3 1941 - 1943
75th anniversary coll.ed.
Alaska
Starring Thora Birch, Vincent Kartheiser, a cute li'l
polar bear,
Charlton Heston, and Dirk Benedict
Directed by Fraser Heston
I walked into Alaska knowing full well it was a "kid's movie." With its poster pair of kidlets and cuddly li'l polar bear tromping across the snow, I just knew I was in for 104 minutes of cute cuddly blecch. And Charlton Heston as the bad guy! Smart-butt Cranky had already figured out that Heston would be reformed by cute cuddly li'l polar bear and come out of this movie a reformed, righteous man.
Wrong on both counts.
Heston stays the bad guy throughout, and Alaska was not hard to sit through at all. It works on a number of levels, once you get it through your head that it is a FANTASY and not based in any kind of reality. If you want a "realistic" story, look elsewhere.
Once upon a time, a 747 pilot (Dirk Benedict) lost his wife in an unspecified manner and, needing to make a new start, moved himself and his kids up to Quincy, Alaska, where he pilots a one seater seaplane delivering things like ampicillin and toilet paper to the inhabitants of the tundra. His youngest, daughter Jessie (Thora Birch), takes to the new locale like a fish to water. She learns to kayak. She learns the geography. She hangs with the natives and has herself a pretty good time. Older brother Sean (Vincent Kartheiser), who would be mid-teens I guess, is bored off his kazoo. He wishes his dad had died instead of his mother. When his dad's plane goes down in a storm, he fears he may have gotten his wish.
Out where everything is snow covered, Charlton Heston shoots and skins polar bears. Early on he shoots a mama bear and takes li'l cuddly cute baby bear into captivity, knowing he can sell it for big bucks to clients in Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, attempts to find and rescue daddy have failed. Kidlet son, riddled with guilt, decides to head north to find and save dad. Determined to protect her older brother's butt, li'l sis signs on for the trek. Sure they'll have to climb mountains, rappel down gorges, negotiate white water runs in kayaks, and canoe and trek over miles of frozen tundra. But they're prepared because they watch ESPN2!!!
Yeah right. Once the kids stumble onto and free the baby bear, the details fall into the realm of fantasy and the story plays out nicely. If you let go of reality.
Director Fraser Heston has done his prep work well. The locations he scouted and selected are breathtakingly spectacular. Once in a while you feel you are slipping into travelogue mode, but the story is paced well. Heston, the director, does not shoot down to the kids. There are thrilling sequences, death defying situations, and enough tension tossed in that virtually all kidlet eyes in the audience I sat with were riveted to the screen.
Ditto the parents. Ditto Cranky.
Normally I don't assign dollar ratings to kids movies, unless they are marketed to the wider audience. But since most kidlet flicks wind up being seen first run on video, I will make an exception...
On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price for Alaska, he would have paid . . .
$5.00
Teens might be bored silly, but if you want a good movie to take the kidlets to, and not be bored off your rocker while you sit through it, you're not going to miss with this one.
 |
Click to buy films starring Charlton Heston |
| Click to buy films starring Dirk Benedict | |
| Click to buy films starring Thora Birch |