Eight Below (Widescreen)
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C Film: C-
Frank Marshall has made interesting films like Arachnophobia
and produced many hits, but a film like Eight Below could have been
directed by anybody. The film stars the
eight husky dogs of the title and Paul Walker as their guide. The dogs have far more personality and as it
turns out, acting ability than Walker and when the dogs are stranded, a rescue
team is gathered to save them. Of
course, if Walker were the one stranded, the rescue would be less likely.
This torture test runs two hours and feels like it is
never going to end. Walker is shot in a
way that tells us “we should give him a chance” or that “we need to like him”
and the more that happens, the more repulsed saner viewers become. Like Vin Diesel, doing a kid’s film seemed
like a good commercial move, but Walker is a very poor man’s Diesel and he is
sickening. Add his long line of bad
films and you wonder why this man keeps getting cast in anything. If this were not a kid’s film, the smarter
dogs might have thrown him off of a glacier, then we’d have a movie!
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot in
Super 35mm film and looks generic, with the transfer here even worse with
washed out detail, bleaching white and bad form. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is fair and has some surround moments,
but is not that impressive. Extras
include deleted scenes with audio commentary option, two full-length audio
commentaries and a making-of featurette, which add up to more entertainment
than the clichéd picture.
- Nicholas Sheffo
