Highly Overrated But Still Good

Fantastic!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I love survival stories!!! I forgot about this above average TV movie for a long time and then it was on Lifetime the other day and I still really enjoy this one!!! A young California couple, Jim and Jennifer Stolpa, played by Neil Patrick Harris and Kelli Williams attempt to pay their respects to a grandmother who passed away in Idaho. They try to go up I 80 (the same route the famous Donner Party traveled!!!) but the highway is closed because of heavy snow. Their reluctance to wait (they want so badly to get to the funeral and lend moral support to Jim's mother)is a potentially fatal decision. They drive up to Redding and take highway 299 east to Cedarville and into desolate Northern Nevada. They find out too late that the snow is worse up there and they end up getting trapped in the snow miles from any civilization. Scary!!! To make matters worse they have a 5 month old infant and they both feel terrible for getting him into a deadly situation. They try to wait it out in their pickup, but when not one other car drives down the road they're on, they make another desperate decision: to walk 20 miles east to a highway they saw on their map. If they can just reach that highway, they can get help.They take a wrong turn on a forked road and end up worse off than ever, and the cold is killing them and the baby. Kelli Williams was awesome when she was crying over Jim having to leave her and the baby behind in the cave!!! It just broke my heart!!! Neil Patrick Harris was great too. His character Jim had to walk some 20 miles back to the truck and then another 50 to Cedarville!!! When it's do or die, human beings are capable of incredible things!!! Like I said, I love survival movies and books, especially when the characters face harsh weather and LONG WALKS!!! FOLLOW THE RIVER and LEAVE NO TRACE are among some of my favorite stories, so SNOWBOUND is right up my alley!!! For a TV movie, it's very well done and I could watch it for many years to come!!!

All the saccharine, lovey-dovey stuff at the start almost made me turn this movie off, but now I see that the screenwriter was just trying to show us the strong bonds that helped three people survive an unbelievable ordeal. Things started moving quickly as the father, taking his young family to join the rest of the clan, ignored weather reports and drove through a blizzard. The snow got worse and worse and finally they were stranded in the middle of nowhere. Their struggles to stay alive kept me awake when a lot of movies would have left me sleeping at the hour when this film was broadcast. I kept saying to myself "No one could survive this long in the bitter cold." Adding to the tension were the decisions: do they stay in the SUV, which offered shelter, but where they will eventually freeze, or do all three brave the elements and face a much surer and sooner extinction, with only the slim chance of finding help? Once they've made that fateful choice, which way do they walk and what if they pick the wrong way? Does father leave wife and baby to freeze in a cave while he's asked to walk 50 miles with frost-bitten feet to get help? Seven days in the cold seems too much for anyone, much less a baby, but somehow all 3 survived it. I wouldn't have believed any of it had I not known it was all true. Good acting, especially from Kelli Williams of TV's "The Practice" series. I can recommend this movie.

This is about as good as a made for TV movie gets. The screenplay goes back and forth from the young couple stranded in their truck in a vast, frozen, and deserted wasteland to the desperate parents trying to find them. The movie draws you in as the various authorities, like the California Highway Patrol, search for days when the couple go missing-- with no luck. Meanwhile, Jim, Jennifer, and their baby are in a desperate life or death situation. They are 50 miles from the nearest town on a back road, in a blizzard, and no one knows they are actually in Northern Nevada. There is no one to help them. No people at all just sagebrush, snow, and rock across a wintry dark and deserted high desert valley. Having lived in Northeast California, I can attest to the frozen desolation the Stolpas faced in Northern Nevada. This movie captures that scenery well with the on location shots. The story is interesting, the acting and writing is decent, and the scenery is beautiful. The ending is incredible! I recommend this movie!

SPOILER contained (although I would do you a favor if I... spoiled the film for you and thus prevented you from watching it!)It's hard to start describing the amount of stupidity and... corniness amassed in this TV-film. I thought the script-writer was aiming for the brain-dead section of TV-market until I saw the (real) Stolpas appearing in a picture at the end of the film. Was this a sign that they had given their consent for this film after watching it or were they just happy to... "be on the TV"? Anyway, to make things worse, the director makes every scene look so predictable that it really gets on your nerves. Sad to see Michael Gross (I) (of classic TV sitcom "Family Ties") play in this flick!