All Rileyed Up

I was at a friend’s house jonesing for a movie to watch and gave me these two movies: Little Women and Eight Below.

We may exaggerate, but we’re still better than Little Women.

This is a movie that is about an 8-dog sled team (six Huskies and two Malamutes, all gorgeous) who are abandoned in Antarctica during one of the worst winters ever. Their owner, upset over the abandonment, spends the next half a year or so figuring out a way to get back to Antarctica to find his precious dogs – whether they will be alive or he will have to bury them, he knows not, but he must find out, with a little help from his friends – the romantic interest, the comic relief (the American Pie guy), and a scientist who was saved by the dogs while on expedition (he fell through the ice and one of the dogs tread upon broken ice to rope him and then the dogs together pulled him out of the water — very cool scene).

Now, this is a Disney movie, so we already know there is a happy ending. There are sad moments, of course, and not all the beautiful doggies make it (two, to be exact), but otherwise, we get to see them live life on their own in Antarctica, a March of the Dogs if you will. They hunt birds, they play in the southern lights, they look out for one another, they follow their leader. It’s like watching a Jack London story come to life, only much better than when Disney actually did bring a Jack London story to life:

Book? There’s a book?

The dogs also battle a leopard seal, though with better luck than penguins. The scene was scary enough to give The Boy nightmares about a leopard seal attacking, so be warned (SPOILER): the leopard seal shows up by surprise when Max finds the dead whale. Other than that, everyone in the family really liked this movie. Unfortunately, I can never let a good thing run its course, and had to go and look up the “inspired by a true story” part of the movie and RUIN ALL THE FUN. The true story is that in 1958, a Japanese expedition left their team of fifteen dogs in Antarctica. Two of them lived. Depressing story of thirteen dead dogs or inspirational tale about the survival of two? You can decide by watching the Japanese 1983 film, Nankyoku Monogatari:

Good for them. Bad for the other dogs.