It’s easy to immediately dismiss “Eight Below.” It’s a Disney film about animals, and it’s inspired by true events, which generally means that viewers can expect a sappy story involving furry, four-legged creatures that behave remarkably like humans. However, taking a page from “March of the Penguins,” Disney is banking on the formula that cute animals, plus snowy scenery, minus humans equals success. Lucky for them, and for us, that’s the case with “Eight Below,” a film that’s pretty easy to watch, especially if you’re a dog lover.

Gerry (Paul Walker) is the guide at a remote Antarctic research station. His “family” consists of the eight dogs mentioned in the title—Maya, Jack, Max, Shadow, Shorty, Dewy, Truman and Buck. When Dr. Davis McLaren (Bruce Greenwood) shows up at the station in search of a meteorite that’s landed on a distant mountain, Gerry and his team are sent to accompany the doctor. Through a series of false steps and mishaps, Gerry and the doc barely make it back to the base alive, only to find that a giant storm is bearing down on the station. And so Gerry, the doctor and the rest of the researchers must evacuate; however, the dogs are left behind.

The dogs are allowed to be dogs and not cute, cloying human surrogates. They race across the vast arctic wasteland, hunt birds and generally survive. When the dogs do display some human characteristics, such as when they mourn their dead, it’s touching and not annoying. Plus, the dogs are the source of all the excitement in the film. The rescue operations that make up the first half-hour of “Eight Below” are tense and thrilling, and a later scene, involving a very angry seal, is surprisingly suspenseful. This is all set against a beautiful arctic backdrop breathtakingly photographed by cinematographer Don Burgess.

The only problem is that, as compelling as the story of the dogs is, the story of their human companions isn’t nearly as interesting. Gerry spends much of the second act listlessly going from job to job, overwhelmed with guilt for leaving the dogs behind. Whenever the story switched back to Gerry’s attempts to mount a rescue mission, I found myself wishing the movie would hurry up and get back to the dogs in Antarctica. These scenes would have been a good opportunity to give Gerry and his fellow explorers a little more depth to their characters, but instead it feels like director Frank Marshall was just trying to pass the time between dog scenes. That’s a minor quibble, though. After all, it’s the dogs, and not their human friends, that give “Eight Below” its warmth.  

directed by: Frank Marshall
starring: Paul Walker, Bruce Greenwood, Jason Biggs and Moon Bloodgood
rated: PG for some peril and brief mild language