Alaska — * *

Critic: Brandon Judell


Close your eyes, sit back in your seat, and just listen to Reg Powell’s original music for “Alaska.” Now guess what’s occurring on screen.

If you reckon, “Oh, it must be something apocalyptic! A “Star Wars” battle. Maybe the Battle of Bulge,” your expectations would be justified.


Now open your eyes. Huh! It’s just a little girl running across a boardwalk. No one’s chasing her. She doesn’t even have an “A” on her report card. She doesn’t even have a report card. It’s just a normal everyday run.

That’s the problem with “Alaska” from it’s title to its cast to its screenplay to Cubby the cub, everything is hyped up, and nothing offered can bear the scrutiny. This is just an uninspired kid’s flick that Castle Rock hopes will makes it’s money back on video sales. And that’s where it belongs. On TV.

The slight tale focuses on the minutely dysfunctional Barnes family. Mother has died and Dad (Dirk Benedict), a former commercial pilot, has transferred his brood to the remote seaside village of Quincy, Alaska.

Twelve-year-old Jessie (Thora Birch) thinks she’s in paradise. She goes kayaking with an Indian pal, glories in the endless mountainous vistas, and is just having one good ’ol time with nature.

Her brother, 14-year-old Sean (Vincent Kartheiser), just broods. “Dad, you used to fly 747’s. Now you deliver toilet paper.” He wants the city back, along with his friends and his Mom. So distraught is he that in a fit of pique, Sean squalls that he wishes Dad had been the deceased parent.

A few hours pass and Sean’s outburst almost comes true. Dad, flying in a storm, crashes onto a mountain ledge. Can he survive? The authorities can’t locate him, but who needs them when you have Sean and Jessie on your side?

The two siblings, who soon hook up with a motherless cub, must fight the elements and an animal poacher (Charlton Heston) to get their pa back. Inane dialogue, fabricated spiritualism, pedestrian acting, and a lousy director don’t impede them on their quest, and for that they should be commended.

Surprisingly, Charlton Heston, though he has saved the Jews and a whole bunch of other distressed folk in the past, along with painting the Sistine Chapel, can’t rescue his son’s picture. But then possibly without the senior Heston agreeing to act in this inconsequential fluff, it would never have been. Perhaps that would have been the more fatherly thing to do.

DIRECTOR: Fraser C. Heston
CAST: Thora Birch, Vincent Kartheiser, Dirk Benedict, Charlton Heston, Gordon Tootoosis
PRODUCERS: Carol Fuchs, Andy Burg (Castle Rock)
CO-PRODUCER: Gordon Mark
SCREENWRITERS: Andy Burg, Scott Myers
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: John Stronach
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Tony Westman
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Douglas Higgins
COMPOSER: Reg Powell
COSTUME DESIGNER: Monique Prudhomme
BEAR TRAINER: Mark Weiner

GENRE: Children’s RATING: PG RUNNING TIME: 1:44