final verdict for: "Alaska" (1996): Admittedly a guilty pleasure, but one that does not stand the test of time, unfortunately.
After losing their mother a small family moves to Alaska, because their father wants to start a new life as a commercial delivery aviator there. When he gets lost in a storm and seemingly can not be found, his 2 children set out to find their lost father. Befriending a bear, they do not only find their father, but also their way to surviving in the frontier conditions and ultimately, their maturity.
I have known this movie for a long time and remember loving it when watching it as a kid. When I started a research project about Alaska two years ago, I decided to use this film and gave it a rewatch and was disappointed. Two years have passed and as I am wrapping up the paper, I gave it another try, but it was no good.
There are two good things about this movie. A: The landscape and B: Charlton Heston, basically playing the gun loving guy he probably really was. Those two were also the only believable things in the movie.
Thora Birch, Vincent Kartheiser and Dirk Benedict give it their best, but they stay uncredible. Especially Birch and Kartheiser oftentimes act in a way that only children will buy and you often sense that they are only acting after given directions.
The plot itself is nicely thought, a modern spirit journey if you will, but the premis is so ridiculous, Jack London would be ashamed of it. These two survive so many situations that would be lethal for even the most skilled and gifted survival adventurer that it makes you shake your head, especially considering that the movie wants us to believe these two kids come from the city and have basically no frontier experience.
The music in this movie is okay, they made it to fit the agasping athmosphere, with the beautiful landscapes, but it is over the top. There is only so and so many orchestral scores with choir, you can stand before it gets boring.
The camera work istelf is well done most of the times, except for minor moments where the camera crew is visible in shadow or the zoom lens chosen in a wrong moment. However this good work gets killed by the editing most of the time, which edits shots together that anyone can spot out as not belonging together, be it, because of obvious changes in the background of because of clothing errors in between shots.
It's really sad, seeing, how this movie could have been so much more, but used so little of his potential. The references to native alaskan culture and how they are linked to the lives of these Chicago kids was a really clever idea and the movie even managed to deliver a certain environmental message. Unfortunately though, these good intents are overshadowed by the poor execution, but hey, that's what you get for letting your son direct the movie, Charlton!
A freezing 4 out of 10 for this sad example of "could have been real good!"
After losing their mother a small family moves to Alaska, because their father wants to start a new life as a commercial delivery aviator there. When he gets lost in a storm and seemingly can not be found, his 2 children set out to find their lost father. Befriending a bear, they do not only find their father, but also their way to surviving in the frontier conditions and ultimately, their maturity.
I have known this movie for a long time and remember loving it when watching it as a kid. When I started a research project about Alaska two years ago, I decided to use this film and gave it a rewatch and was disappointed. Two years have passed and as I am wrapping up the paper, I gave it another try, but it was no good.
There are two good things about this movie. A: The landscape and B: Charlton Heston, basically playing the gun loving guy he probably really was. Those two were also the only believable things in the movie.
Thora Birch, Vincent Kartheiser and Dirk Benedict give it their best, but they stay uncredible. Especially Birch and Kartheiser oftentimes act in a way that only children will buy and you often sense that they are only acting after given directions.
The plot itself is nicely thought, a modern spirit journey if you will, but the premis is so ridiculous, Jack London would be ashamed of it. These two survive so many situations that would be lethal for even the most skilled and gifted survival adventurer that it makes you shake your head, especially considering that the movie wants us to believe these two kids come from the city and have basically no frontier experience.
The music in this movie is okay, they made it to fit the agasping athmosphere, with the beautiful landscapes, but it is over the top. There is only so and so many orchestral scores with choir, you can stand before it gets boring.
The camera work istelf is well done most of the times, except for minor moments where the camera crew is visible in shadow or the zoom lens chosen in a wrong moment. However this good work gets killed by the editing most of the time, which edits shots together that anyone can spot out as not belonging together, be it, because of obvious changes in the background of because of clothing errors in between shots.
It's really sad, seeing, how this movie could have been so much more, but used so little of his potential. The references to native alaskan culture and how they are linked to the lives of these Chicago kids was a really clever idea and the movie even managed to deliver a certain environmental message. Unfortunately though, these good intents are overshadowed by the poor execution, but hey, that's what you get for letting your son direct the movie, Charlton!
A freezing 4 out of 10 for this sad example of "could have been real good!"
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