Forgotten Filmography Friday 13

Chilly Dogs (dir. Bob Spiers, 2001)
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Summary: Snow Dogs with White People. Wait, read on.

Ok, listen to this: somebody who has no place going to Alaska inherits land there and goes for the adventure of a lifetime, he falls in love, and goes on a dog race. Does this sound remotely familiar? It should. It’s the plot to one of the last thrashes of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s legitimate Oscar-winning film career, Snow Dogs (he later went on to further sabotage himself with duds like Radio, The Fighting Temptations, and What Love Is.)

This is not Snow Dogs. Snow Dogs is Shakespeare next to this polished frozen dog turd. But further to my chagrin, this movie came out a month before Snow Dogs, which leads me to believe one of two possible conclusions:
1) Two people had the same awful idea (possible).
2) Somebody heard about Snow Dogs and tried to produce the exact same story (more probable.)

Here’s an interview with “star” Skeet Ulrich (the film was released in Europe as Kevin of the North):


Leslie Nielsen, and Natasha “Species” Henstridge round out this cast of people who were once relevant.



Kevin starts from scenic Canoga Park (two towns away from beautiful Van Nuys, CA, where I grew up,) to Alaska. This movie has the laughs literally coming at a snail’s pace (1 mm/second, if Wikipedia’s to be trusted.) Everyone is literally phoning this in.

Leslie Nielsen is trying to find a treasure map owned by Kevin’s grandfather. There’s a dog race, a love triangle, some dog pee, everything here is so by the book it makes me want to scream, or yawn.

The one saving grace of this film is a presence of bulldog (albeit an American, and not a British, Bulldog.) Bulldogs, if you were not aware, are ridiculously adorable, because they are simultaneously tough and tiny yet seem to not be aware of how tiny they are (some chihuahuas are cute for this exact reason.) They also look happy all the time. Here is a video of one eating a watermelon.



See? Isn't that adorable?

In conclusion, bulldogs are perhaps the best breed of dog because...wait, what was I talking about? Anyway, pass on this movie, it’s not worth watching, and barely even worth writing about. But it was better than Sherlock: Undercover Dog. D+.