Eight Below: Critic Reviews

[A] spirit-affirming family affair about the resourcefulness of God's creatures.

Abandoned by their masters when a storm hits Antarctica, eight amazing huskies find themselves instantly anthropomorphized.

It's an engrossing film that reminds us of the nobility and grace of man's best friend, and of the fierce will to survive in the face of the harshest of odds.

The eight canine stars of Eight Below pull their weight literally and figuratively in this lively dog-in-jep adventure from Disney.

It's the most touching love story about tragically separated sexy beasts since Cold Mountain.

The plot's slavish schmaltz proves as oppressive as the harsh winter that descends upon the dogs.

Walker, of 2 Fast 2 Furious, is 2 flat 2 forgettable.

Basically, what we have here is a stranded-animal movie in which the stranded animals are forced to split screen time with a mopey human character and his annoying, redundant friends.

Eight Below may be a Disney Lite version of a true story about sled dogs left to survive on their own in the Antarctic wilderness, but it's still a weeper for those for whom the loss of one dog is too much.

If you thought imperiled emperor penguins were heartwrenching, beware of these dogs.

Remarkable, how in a film where we know with an absolute certainty that all or most of the dogs must survive, Eight Below succeeds as an effective story. It works by focusing on the dogs.

Eight Below is the Brian's Song of dog movies: schmaltzy, feel-goody, inspired-by-a-true-story-y. It's formulaic and frequently over the top, 30 minutes too long and altogether too slow.

Eight Below is dazzling to look at, and nicely intercuts the human relationships with the pooches' awesome struggles to stay alive in the white, wintry wild.

Although the movie blatantly panders to pet lovers, it deserves high marks for not jettisoning credibility in the process. Its bite is as good as its bark.

In 2002, the cringefest Snow Dogs stripped huskies of their dignity. Eight Below restores it.

Not since Lassie Come Home has there been such a wonderful film about the limitless bonds between men and dogs that triumph over adversity.

The family adventure Eight Below is an easy watch, thanks to the splendors of frosty scenery and furry canines.

The dogs deserve the star treatment, because whenever [Paul] Walker and the other two-footers take over it's as if Jack Nicholson has yielded the spotlight to, say, David Schwimmer.

Pity the filmmakers lost their nerve just short of a big payoff.

Providing you park your reason outside and let these amazing dogs do the work, which they appear delighted to do, Eight Below is an engaging enough way to spend an hour or two with the kids.

... the canine cuteness, breathtaking action and acts of bravery are worth braving the Disney elements -- overpowering, poignant music, an unnecessary romantic subplot -- if you like your movies doggy-style.

This is one of those lazy, lukewarm pictures that's even more disappointing than a purely bad one, and for one glaring reason: How could Marshall, his writers, and even his actors have let these dogs down so badly?

Eight Below runs two hours and would have benefited from losing 30 minutes of that -- all of it from Jerry's (Paul Walker) protracted quest. The other human actors are simply types.

Disney may have written the book on live-action animal adventure stories, but it has been quite a while since there has been a chapter as terrific as Eight Below.