Alaska

If you can manage to overlook some annoying gaps in logic and the relentless bombast of the ever-present musical score, Alaska is a pretty decent kids' adventure movie. The primary things that makes it so are the impeccable performances by Thora Birch and Vincent Kartheiser as the two kids who set off in a kayak to find their father (Benedict) whose helicopter has crashed in the wilds of Alaska. Each has a genuine and unaffected quality that lends a certain reality to this otherwise overblown drama. Now, as far as what each of them was thinking when they set out on their rescue mission in a two-person kayak with few supplies or medical equipment, I can't hazard a guess. In the wilds, the kids tangle with a bloodthirsty hunter (Heston) and his comic sidekick (Fraser), who are obsessed with catching this one elusive polar bear cub (Agee) who happens to befriend the kids. The bear practically becomes their guardian angel, helping them out of jams and romping playfully, cute as a Pooh. The movie is directed by Fraser C. Heston, son of Charlton, and was shot on location in Alaska. The scenery is breathtaking, though the film too frequently resorts to redundant and unnecessarily elaborate camerawork as if to prove that everyone is getting their full dollar's worth. Despite some hokey pieces of wisdom such as the old Inuit's instruction to “trust the bear,” Alaska also conveys some of Hollywood's more conventional lessons. When the father's reminder to “never give up” is rejected by the son as a Little League platitude, the course of the movie ultimately proves the sagacity of the advice. Little of Alaska is logical or plausible, but, somehow, that's not quite as problematic as one might suspect.