Eight Below - Turn on the Waterworks

I need to preface this review with a statement: I am not a "cryer." Sure, I'll tear up at the end of Schindler's List and movies like Steel Magnolias (even though I sort of despise movies like Steel Magnolias). Admittedly, I even got a little watery at the end of Titanic, much as I hate to admit it. But despite my usual stoic movie-going persona, I cannot make it through THE TRAILER for Eight Below without coming seriously close to full-on sobbing. Oh Walt Disney, how your cryogenically frozen creative genius still tugs at my heart strings!

Eight Below stars Paul Walker and eight big, fluffy bad-ass sled dogs. On an expedition to some part of Antarctica that sounds like "Melbourne," Paul Walker's human traveling companion (a doctor) falls down a ravine and through ice into the frozen depths below. One of the dogs heroically saves him, and they race back to base camp to get the good doctor airlifted out of Dodge. Unfortunately, the dogs have to be left behind. Paul Walker lovingly kisses them goodbye and promises to come back for them. Oh hot Paul Walker, if only it were that simple!

Then cinema's newest, most overused cliche rolls in - the STORM OF THE CENTURY - and they can't go back right away for the dogs. If the producers are smart, at this point the movie will shift away from focusing on it's human actors and will allow the dog-actors to take over entirely. They definitely catch fish and birds to stay alive, and from the trailer it appears that they discover some kind of dinosaur that tries to eat them. My biggest fear about seeing this movie is that Old Jack, the "Grandfather of the Group" will die doing something heroic and I'll subsequently die in the theater from dehydration after crying myself retarded.

It also appears that Paul Walker (he of the Keanu Reeves school of dramatic interpretation) actually does a fine job here too. Let's be honest though, I'd claim he did a "fine job" if all he did was stand there in a parka for 90 minutes. Anyway, even though I'm pretty sure I can predict the ending to this film now (give or take a few dogs), I really like tales of "survival against all odds" and this one looks as though it will deliver.