I always thought I’d rather have nitroglycerin dribbled into my corneas than watch a movie called Snowball Express. When I finally decided to check it out, I anticipated an experience similar to having bamboo slivers rammed between my fingernails. Miraculously, that was not the case.
Perhaps my mood was colored by the first flakes of a January blizzard falling outside my window, but I actually enjoyed Snowball Express from 1972, a slapstick comedy about one man’s mission to start up a ski lodge. The film is part of a genre created by Disney; a sort of cinematic movement, not inspired by the French New Wave, but by the unexpected success of The Shaggy Dog (1959). That movie told the “classic” tale of a teenager’s transformation into a sheepdog via a magic ring. It set the mold for a series of movies the Disney Empire began churning out during the sixties and early seventies.
The films were made using the same facile ingredients: Take one All-American. Add some disruption to his life. Said disruption can be A) a supernatural/fantastical/scientific force, B) an unwanted, troublesome animal (dog, cat, horse, duck), or C) a preternatural object (sentiment Volkswagen, flying rubber). Add a few laughs aimed for the kids. Keep budgets low. Stir and serve.
From this recipe came “films” like The Million Dollar Duck (1971) and The Ugly Dachshund. (1966). It’s easy to dismiss these movies as the abysmal trash they seem to be. But take them for what there were intended to be: not nuanced portrayals of middle-class life in the mid-twentieth century, but silly entrainment for kids to chuckle at. And don’t totally swat away the formula. While the aforementioned films have dwindled in the public consciousness, the recipe did yield a few films that have remained classics or near classics, such as The Love Bug (1966), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and That Darn Cat! (1965).
Snowball Express comes toward the end of what Leonard Maltin terms the “Disney gimmick comedies”, but features one of the movement’s more prolific actors. While you might not know Dean Jones’s name, if you grew up in the 90s, you most certainly know him as the evil animal doctor from Beethoven (1992). The role was a conscious reversal of Jones’s Average Schmoe persona that he personified during his many films with Disney. A talented stage actor, Jones originated roles on Broadway in Under the Yum-Yum Tree and in Stephen Sondheim’s Company. Even in the worst film dreck, Jones was the diamond bobbing amongst the flotsam.
While most of the other gimmick comedies are too firmly steeped in the time period they were conceived, Snowball Express has a surprisingly modern aura, from the performances, to the color-processing, and most importantly, the humor. The set-up is pure situational comedy, so much so that I’m surprised no network series spun-off from it.
Jones plays an unhappy corporate accountant who inherits the Grand Imperial Hotel in Silver Lake, Colorado. Jones and his family move out, expecting to dive into the hotel’s pool of money like a flock of Scrooge McDucks. Turns out, the Grand Imperial Hotel ain’t Grand, ain't’ Imperial, and ain’t no hotel. It’s a ramshackle inn, dilapidated into a nesting box for raccoons, bats, and other varmints. Rather than just torch the joint and phone up his insurance company, Jones makes the only other logical decision: he’s going to turn the rat-trap into a ski lodge.
In the more infantile Disney gimmick comedies, mostly kids find amusement in the cartoonish behaviors of human beings and concomitant outlandish premises. While Snowball Express is certainly not grounded in any sort of reality, it’s a much more palatable premise. (In Million Dollar Duck, a radiated duck eats homemade apple sauce and starts laying golden eggs.) Amazingly, Snowball Express posses an adroit balance of wholesome laughs and adult insinuations to maintain even the attention of persons who have stopped teething.
Kids (and some kids-at-heart too) will enjoy the ski-related pratfalls and the family’s dog (ironically, a St. Bernard). There’s enough terrific cinematography of Colorado’s white blanketed mountain peaks, and a few very subtle moments of sexual innuendos to keep adults amused. A fairly well executed climax involving a snowmobile race might not be Mad Max: Fury Road, but is as funny (if not funnier) and more amusing than anything of this genre.
Movie buffs will also feel more than satiated by a plethora of deliciously talented character actors like Dick Van Patten (Spaceballs), Mary Wickes (Sister Act), and George Linsday (The Andy Griffith Show); and Disney stalwarts like Nancy Olson (Pollyanna), Keenan Wynn (The Absent-Minded Professor, Herbie Rides Again) and Michael McGreevey (The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes). But it’s Harry Morgan (TV’s MASH) who nearly steals the entire film from everyone by playing a cantankerous Mr. Fixit-turned-bellhop.
Snowball Express is no more a cinematic treasure than a Whopper Jr with cheese is a benchmark of fine dining. But sometimes it’s nice to take a break from the beef bourguignon and chow down on some fast food. Said metaphor applies to the Disney gimmick comedies.
I’m genuinely surprised that Disney didn’t remake the film in the 90s with Chevy Chase or in the 2000s with either Eddie Murphy or Tim Allen. The lightweight material and ample opportunity for slapstick was not too dissimilar from the vehicles they did appear in. Perhaps it’s all for the best though. While Dean Jones’s Snowball Express is good movie-junk-food, Chevy Chase’s may have been nitroglycerin in the eyes.
