Week Four: Balto

Year: 1995,

Director: Simon Wells,

Nostalgia Score: 3.5/5,

Most Recent Watch: Probably sometime in the early 2000's.

Fun Fact: According to Wikipedia, director Simon Wells is the great-grandson of H. G. Wells.

Unlike the first three movies I watched for this project, I hadn't seen Balto since I was a kid. I did like the movie, and I watched it pretty often. I just haven't watched it since for whatever reason. Between Balto and the live-action movie Iron Will, I did have a brief interest in dog sledding which looked to me like a really badass adventure where you also got to hang out with dogs. Anyway, Balto still holds up as a children's film, but it didn't keep my attention the same way it did when I was younger. The animation is good and the plot is perfectly okay, but the story and characters seemed sort of flat.

First off, there are a couple distinct things I remember about watching Balto as a kid. I was under the very firm impression that the sick children in the film had pneumonia. So, I was pretty surprised when they actually mentioned diphtheria several times. I guess I just didn't know that word as a small child, and filled it in with a similar illness that I had heard of. Also, I remembered some really breathtaking scenes of the aurora borealis being heavily featured in Balto. In fact, that was one of my main memories of the movie and I even think that I first learned about the aurora borealis from watching it. Turns out that those scenes don't really happen. Instead, Balto shows Jenna this trick of shining light through broken glass to make a sort of fake aurora show up on a wall. There is a brief scene of the northern lights right at the end of the film, but it's not realistic either because it sort of materializes into this stylized howling wolf before cutting back to the live-action frame story.

All that being said, there are a several things in this movie that I never realized a child, but really want to pick apart as an adult. The most obvious complaint is about character design; Balto and the antagonist, Steele, look an awful lot like recolored dog versions of Simba and Scar from The Lion King. This is even more suspicious since The Lion King came out in '94 and Balto came out in '95. Seriously though, the dogs of Balto look strikingly similar to the lions of The Lion King, particularly Balto himself. The eyes and character gestures are so close, and Balto even has the same unruly tuft of fur on the top of his head as young Simba does before he grows a mane. Besides having fairly similar names, Steele and Scar also have a few other shared attributes. They're both very thin, with thinner faces than other characters in their respective movies and a deeper chest. Scar is a much more successful and interesting villain though. And alhough they don't look alike, Boris the goose reminded be of another too serious animal sidekick with a funny foreign accent: Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid. I understand there are only so many ways to draw friendly looking, but semi-realistic animals, but you'd think they would want Balto to be more visually distinct.

I'm also not sure what narrative purpose is served by having Balto be a wolfdog. It's not that relevant to the story and it's a significant modification from the real-life events that inspired the movie. It feels like a lazy way to add some personality to the character and make him more sympathetic. There's a moment at the beginning of the film when he sees a wolf pack in the distance and they howl at him, apparently inviting him to join them. I immediately wondered why he didn't because clearly, the wolves would treat him better than the dogs and their humans. The only time Balto's wolf ancestry even plays a role in the story is when he falls down a cliff with the antitoxin and wakes up to see a white wolf, who howls at him. He howls with the wolf for a minute this time and then climbs up the cliff while pulling up the medicine. This is apparently relevant because he has big feet and maybe the wolf was telling him not to give up? I think the story would have been a lot more compelling and heart-warming if Balto had his own sick child owner that he wanted to save. He could still be a wolfdog and they could still keep the romance angle with Jenna, but it would make his rescue mission feel so much more important. As for the idea that he wants to prove that he belongs in town, that idea is just sort of forgotten. So, it does sort of seem like he just wants to help Rosie to help Jenna, not because he really cares about the other children or about being accepted. He doesn't even mention the children to Steele when they argue over who will lead the sled team back to Nome which seems like the obvious line to make Steele look self absorbed.

Speaking of Steele, he is a remarkably flat antagonist. Honestly, a lot of kids' movies make due with flat villains, and that's really all that a kid's movie calls for, but Steele is especially boring. He's the stereotypical alpha jock/bully who shows up in pretty much every middle school or high school movie ever made. He intentionally puts the lives of his musher, his sled team, and the children of Nome at risk just to look he's the best sled dog. His evil deeds end up seeming disproportionately huge compared to his motives.

Now, for as much time as I just spent complaining about this movie, it does have some redeeming qualities. I really like the live-action frame story with Grandma Rosie. Depicting an older person's memories and imagination as a cartoon is kind of neat, and her granddaughter is clearly wearing the musher's hat Rosie's parents give her in the beginning of the film. I also quite like Balto's sidekicks, Muk, Luk, and Boris. They almost seem to have more complex personalities than Balto himself and they undoubtedly had more interesting back stories hidden away somewhere. Why isn't Boris with the other geese in the first place? When and why did Boris learn to speak dog? Why are Muk and Luk afraid of swimming? Why do they consider Boris their uncle? Are they supposed to be orphaned cubs? How old are they supposed to be anyway? I have so many questions. Though comedic sidekicks can quickly grow irritating, I wasn't annoyed by these three, even if the larger bear communicates in silly squeaks and groans.

Really though, don't let my nitpicking get you down when it comes to this movie. It is, as previously stated, a perfectly good kids' movie. None of the things that bothered me as an adult bothered me as a child, and I seriously doubt other children will notice them either. Balto just isn't one of those really solid whole family films. It's something that will probably keep kids entertained, but might bore adults a little bit (and I did get bored watching the many, very similar obstacles the sled team runs into on the way back to Nome). It does have a few things going for it. The animation is good, and although it is simple, it isn't stupid. It's just heartwarming enough, as long as you don't overthink it, which I totally did. But, that's why I'm here.