Alaska (1996): Dir: Fraser C. Heston / Cast: Vincent Kartheiser, Thora Birch, Dirk Benedict, Charlton Heston, Gordon Tootoosis: Disappointing family film about extraordinary events. It just should be noted that the film itself is not the extraordinary event. It stars Vincent Kartheiser and Thora Birch as two children searching for their father when his plane crashes. They free a baby polar bear from poachers, which bears nothing to the plot and the conclusion is laughable when factoring weight ratios between a bear and a plane. Director Fraser C. Heston does his best and casts his father Charlton as a poacher but the role is pretty standard. Kartheiser plays a rebellious brat who dislikes the fact that he lives in the middle of cold nowhere and now searches for his father out of guilt. Birch plays his smarter sister although her brain power hardly makes up for the amount of stupidity snow stormed into this fiasco. Dirk Benedict basically teeters in a plane and reflects upon times that didn't involve him teetering in a plane. An Indian gives sound advice, "follow the bear." Funny that it doesn't know where it's going either. It could have led them under an avalanche for all they knew. Had it been intelligent it would have sued Animal Planet for loaning him. Message uplifts smaller factors over the unlikely despite its implausible contrivances. Now if only those smaller factors wrote the screenplay. Score: 3 / 10
Review of Alaska
