Balto II: Wolf Quest

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Balto II:Wolf Quest
Directed by Phil Weinstein
Produced by Phil Weinstein
Written by Dev Ross
Starring Maurice LaMarche
Jodi Benson
Lacey Chabert
David Carradine,
Mark Hamill
Charles Fleischer
Peter MacNicol
Rob Paulsen
Nicolette Little
Melanie Spore
Kevin Schon
Joe Alaskey
Monnae Michaell
Mary Kay Bergman
Jeff Bennett
Music by Adam Berry
Editing by Ken Soloman
Distributed by Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Running time 76 min.
Country USA
Language English
Preceded by Balto (1995)
Followed by Balto III: Wings of Change (2004)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Balto II: Wolf Quest is a 2002 sequel to Universal Studios' 1995 animated film Balto.

Contents

[edit] Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

This sequel continues the tale of Balto as he and his mate, Jenna, have a family of six puppies. Five of their puppies look exactly like their husky mother, while one pup, Aleu, clearly takes her looks from her father. When they all reach eight weeks old, all of the other pups are adopted, but Aleu is not. A year passes, and after a close run-in with a hunter, Balto is forced to tell Aleu of her wolf heritage. In anger, she runs away, hoping to find her place in the world.

At the same time, Balto has been struggling with strange dreams of a raven, ice floes, and a pack of yellow-eyed wolves. He cannot understand what the visions mean, but when Aleu turns up missing, he runs off to find her and bring her back home. He meets with mysterious creatures, like a cunning fox, a trio of wolverines that taunt him, the same guiding raven from his dreams, and a furious grizzly bear, that suddenly disappear as if they were never there.

During the journey, his friends, Boris, a Russian snow goose, and Muk and Luk, twin polar bears, hope to find Balto, but they are halted by some unknown spiritual force. They soon realize that this journey to find Aleu is meant for the father and daughter themselves. Aleu, after taking refuge in a cave, meets the field mouse called Muru who lets Aleu realise that being part-wolf isn't so bad. He teachs her that everyone is guided by a spirit guide. After singing the song "Who are you?", it turns out that Muru is Aleu's spirit guide.

When Aleu and Balto reunite after a close escape from the bear, a part that helped them escape is a strange ability that Aleu managed to get somehow, and allowed Aleu see the bear's thoughts. Aleu has started to grow, telling her father that she's not going home until she discovers who she is. The two of them travel onward, both following the raven, to a starving pack of wolves by the ocean. They are led by an old wolf named Nava, who has shamanic powers and can contact the spiritual white wolf, Aniu, in his visions. He tells his pack that one day soon, they will be led by a new leader, "the one who is wolf and does not know." Everyone believes that Balto, who is half wolf himself, is the chosen one that Aniu was speaking of. However, Niju, a young wolf with the help of his three underlings (Nuk, Yak and Sumac), hopes that he will be the next leader since he is stronger and more powerful than the ailing Nava is.

The day comes to depart from their home to follow the caribou, the wolves' food source, across the large sea using pieces of ice like a bridge, with Balto in the lead. When Nava is separated from the rest of the pack, Aleu joins him to help him across, but runs into Niju, who is ready to take the elderly leader's life and the young half-wolf's as well. Balto abandons the pack to save his daughter, but before anyone gets hurt, they realize that the pack is floating away, leaderless. Nava cannot make the swim in his old age, and Niju shows his fearfulness and returns to his homeland. Balto then decides to go, but Aleu soon realizes that this is where she truly belongs, since her father belongs back in Nome. The story ends, with Aleu as the leader of a wild wolf pack, Nava returning to his home to find Niju, and the raven revealing its true form as the white wolf, Aniu, who is Balto's birth mother and spirit guide.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

  • Other then Aleu, only three other pups are named: Saba, Dingo and Kodiak or Kodi.
  • Like her brother, Kodiak, Aleu is named after some volcanic islands on the coast of Alaska: the Aleutian Islands.
  • Balto's design changed in the sequel, in the original, he was a muddy brown while in the sequel, he is a greyish colour.
  • When Aleu says "I Say Niju Is Afraid To Cross The Great Water", the stance she does is almost remiscent of the stance that Thunderbolt,the one of a kind wonder dog from 101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London Adventure, would do whenever he jumped on the t.v. cliff.
  • When Balto is on the rock, looking at the water, he originaly did the same stance that Thunderbolt, from 101 Dalmatians 2:Patch's London Adventure would do whenever he jumped on the cliff that was shown on the t.v.
  • The pups of Balto and Jenna are:Denali,Dingo,Yukon,Saba,Kodi,Aleu.
  • Denali is the pup that is almost solid red in colour.
  • Dingo is the pup who is the darkest out of the males.
  • Yukon is the male puppy with the red blaze on his face.
  • Saba looks alot like Kodi, only she doesn't have a bridge (the marking on Kodi is called a bridge) and she has blue eyes.

[edit] Notes

  • During the song "Who You Really Are", you can hear a woodwind-sounding instrument. That is actually produced by a vacuum tube with two empty toilet rolls taped at the end. At the time the production team had too low a salary to use a woodwind instrument, and the reason for the two toilet rolls is because the tube was playing the tune in the wrong key, leading to the team working the tube extending the length so that it would play in the right key.[1]

[edit] Voice actors

[edit] References

  1. ^ Full Circle Productions, Inc. Vacuum Tube Didgeridoo

[edit] External links

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