Chilly Dogs AKA: Kevin Of The North is about a young travel agent named Kevin Manley (Skeet Ulrich) in Canoga Park who receives an inheritance in Alaska. He promptly quits his job and heads up north to to collect on what, no doubt, will be a large sum and he will no longer have to worry about finances again.
Upon getting to Alaska, he learns of a clause his grandfather put in his will (tired cliché anyone?) and has to participate in the Iditarod Dog Race to prove his is man enough to accept his grandfathers inheritance.
There he meets Clive Thornton (Leslie Nielsen), a beautiful young blond (Natasha Henstridge) and the town bully (Lochlyn Munro). All three have their own reasons for wanting Kevin to fail and, thus, he must overcome many obstacles just to make it to the race itself. I'm not sure why I'm spending so much time on the plot, itself, it's merely there for the jokes but that's the surprise. Lately, Lesley Nielsen movies have been pretty darn unfunny and while this movie is not that good, it is pretty funny. Leslie's character Clive was the funniest with his snide comments that you have to be paying attention to to catch. Easily the funniest character in this movie and much better than his next movie Men With Brooms, which was horrible no matter how you look at it. But don't get me wrong, it's no Naked Gun either- far from it, but it gets the job done.
Natasha Henstridge plays Bonnie Livengood, whom they later find out their grandfathers had a horrible history with one another, which hurts their relationship as well. Natasha plays the lead female here very well and I enjoyed her performance in it.
Skeet Ulrich, as Kevin Manley, reminded me so much of Matthew Broderick with his voice, it was amazing, albeit unintentional I'm positive. However, I have never seen him in the clown role before and I think he did fine, considering Will Ferrell or Jim Carrey probably were not in the budget for this one (It's always been a dream of mine for Carrey and Nielsen to make a movie together).
Lochlyn Munro played Ned Parker, the town jerk. He was all right here but could probably be cast better. He didn't seem like a real threat to Kevin at any point and every time I saw him on screen I couldn't get his scene with Julian (John C. McGinley) taking a bath with him in Wagon's East out of my head.
Given the circumstances and what I was expecting to see (explains why it sat on my DVD rack for almost a year) I was pleasantly surprised. 7/10
