"8 Below"

[furtech]

I went to see "Eight Below" tonight .

I went into this knowing that it would be nothing like the film it was based on ( "Nankyoku monogatari" aka "Antarctica" ). That film is amazing and more raw--a real tear jerker. I wondered just -how- much they Disney-fied the original.

Overall, I got what I wanted: typical Disney fare that is both sappy and relatively enjoyable. Along the lines of "The Incredible Journey" or "Thomasina". The filmmakers at least did a decent amount of research. They got a few things terribly wrong but to me they weren't hugely noticeable mistakes. Without spoilers: the science expedition was barely believable; what's with all the daylight?; and when winter's setting in, the ice doesn't get thinner! The dogs were anthropomorphized but far less than I expected. I could see what they based the behaviors on-- the anthropomorphizing was essentially to shortcut/make more obvious how the dogs survived. They also didn't show what was probaby the dogs' main food source during that time-- penguins-- because they're too cute to be seen torn apart by hungry huskies I guess.

The dogs were gorgeous and probably the best actors in the movie. And again without giving out spoilers, not all of them survive which was both poignant and somewhat surprising (I dreaded Disney totally sappifying the story.

Bottom line: if you want to see wonderful icy scenery and lots of huskies, go see it. If you want sophisticated stories or realistic survival epics, skip it.

Comments

[cooner.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm. I'd say they played the case itself fairly straight ... the case they were deliberating seemed like a legitimate one ... although because of the limited time and the detached nature of the case (the case itself wasn't important, but the fact that Monk was serving on a jury tied in to the other, main storyline that was going on) required that the characters and reactions were simplified and sped up a bit. For example, the whole "You've made some excellent points ..." to "Alright, you've convinced me, not guilty" conversion of the logical character was there, but very quick, almost tokenized. It was almost like watching a "play within a play" version of the movie.

I guess the end result was that anyone who hasn't seen 12 Angry Men would see a bunch of passable dialogue that looked like a legitimate case going on, but anyone familiar with it would recognize it and be amused by it.

Ahah ... the episode is already available on iTunes for $2. :D