ALASKA

ALASKA offers the ingredients of a wholesome family adventure: two teenagers searching the wilderness for their father, breathtaking scenery, terrific animals, and a polar bear cub who becomes their guide. The story’s family focus and rescue adventure give it real appeal.

But the movie’s weak dialogue, acting, and direction make the journey feel like a standard B-grade wilderness movie on a big budget. The story is also frequently far-fetched, sometimes almost laughably so. More seriously, the film is peppered with obscenities and profane exclamations, and its moral worldview is marred by Indian mysticism.

If you want to see it, wait for home viewing, where you can guide the conversation and decide whether its content suits your family.

After their mother dies, teenagers Sean and Jessie move to Alaska with their father, Jake, an airline pilot. When Jake crashes into a mountain during a storm while delivering medical supplies, the siblings brave the wilderness to find him.

Their journey brings them through beautiful but dangerous country, with help from a polar bear cub and obstacles created by poachers.

Two stars means ALASKA has worthwhile pieces but falls short as a film. The scenery looks great, the animals are terrific, and the adventure is breathtaking. Those elements provide the movie’s strongest appeal.

The dialogue and direction are noticeably weak, and the acting is also weak. Much of the story is far-fetched, sometimes almost laughably so. The beautiful photography and adventure cannot overcome those flaws or the movie’s frequent obscenities and profane exclamations.

ALASKA presents a wholesome storyline centered on children searching for their father after a family loss. It values family loyalty, courage, and perseverance in a difficult wilderness. The movie also includes lying, poaching, and talking back to a parent, while Indian mysticism mars its moral worldview.

The film’s family-centered longing fits with Scripture’s concern for compassion and restored relationships: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Yet the mystical elements depart from a biblical understanding of where people should seek spiritual guidance.

ALASKA has beautiful photography, terrific animals, and a wholesome family adventure buried inside weak filmmaking, far-fetched storytelling, profanity, and mysticism. For most families, the wiser choice is WAIT FOR HOME, where parents can guide the experience. For cleaner wilderness adventure, consider.