If you quite liked Cool Runnings, the wacky comedy about the Jamaican bobsleigh team at the Winter Olympics, then you'll quite like Snow Dogs, the wacky comedy about a dentist in sunny Florida, played by Cuba Gooding Jr, who journeys to Alaska to find his real dad, and gets caught up in the world of dog-sled racing in the brass-monkey-freezing weather.

Director Brian Levant, responsible for Beethoven, is clearly positioning himself in the Hollywood marketplace as someone who can extract the maximum comic potential from dogs. That isn't a hell of a lot, in my opinion, and the faces of the husky-team of dogs have been digitally tinkered with in the Babe manner to produce cute smirks and frowns - an irritating technique, lacking the skilled invention of proper animation, and obscuring the charm and dignity of animals' unadorned faces.

As for the humans, it's got game performances from some real veterans: Nichelle "Lt Uhura" Nichols plays Cuba's adoptive mom and James Coburn gives some ballast to the movie as the querulous, cantankerous old local with a vital secret. But really this is a bit of an uphill sleigh ride.