Miami dentist Ted Brooks has no time for nightmares.

He's living a dream.

He's wealthy, successful, popular and content until the day he receives word his mother has willed him all her worldly possessions, including a team of Alaskan huskies.

It's not visions of huskies and blizzards that has Brooks in a tizzy but rather the knowledge he was adopted.

It's a fact the loving couple who raised him kept secret.

Disney's family comedy Snow Dogs works on two important levels.

First and foremost, it is a slapstick fish-out-of-water story.

Poor Ted (Cuba Gooding Jr.) has no idea what he's in for when he heads out for Alaska to find his roots.

When he first arrives in the tiny hamlet of Tolketna, Ted is greeted by a freezing wind that catapults him across the frozen lake that doubles as an airplane landing field.

His mother was not a wealthy woman. Her belongings hold more sentimental value than material.

His new canine charges are anything but thrilled with his arrival. They pounce on him, ripping apart his parka. None of these physical discomforts match Ted's discovery that his biological father is a white man.

What's worse, that white man is none other than Thunder Jack (James Coburn), the most ornery creature in Tolketna.

This discovery forms the basis of Snow Dogs' second level. It's a movie that addresses interracial relationships and adoption and it has some important insights to impart.

Ted comes to terms with his mixed heritage and feelings of abandonment. He also comes to respect and love his adoptive parents even more for the unconditional love they gave him.

But let's not get maudlin because Snow Dogs certainly doesn't.

It roars along like a sled being pulled by a team of hyperactive canines.

Much of the fun of Snow Dogs is watching Ted try to bond with the dogs and learn to master a sled.

Thanks to some clever animatronics, the dogs seem close to being human.

They wink and smile at each other in the most conspiratorial of ways, letting the audience know they are up to no good each time Ted hitches them to a sled.

The trailers for Snow Dogs suggest the huskies talk in much the same way the animals in Babe did, but this only occurs in a brief dream sequence.

Gooding is a fearless comedian who seems to welcome the physical abuse of slapstick.

He rolls down hillsides, slams into trees, falls into freezing lakes and dangles from cliffs, all the time registering myriad emotions on his rubbery face.

Coburn is a master at appearing mean when it's all too obvious the guy really has a heart of gold. Thunder Jack is no Grinch.

He only likes people to think he is.

As Gooding's love interest, Joanna Bacalso is as independent as she is beautiful and Nichelle Nichols brings class to the role of Ted's Miami mother.

As Ted's motormouth dental assistant, Sisqo steals almost every scene he's in. It's one of those over-the-top performances that works for, rather than detracts from, the film.

Snow Dogs is a film with almost as many delights for adults as there are for children and dog lovers. (More on: Snow Dogs).

(This film is rated F)

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