There are times when watching a movie you realize the wrong person is making it. Some directors just fit certain genres better than others, know how to make a particular kind of picture like no one else can. Think Michael Mann and the crime melodrama, Martin Scoresese hitting the streets of New York, John Ford picking up a six-shooter or Akira Kurosawa lifting a samurai sword. Those filmmakers had a style that, while transferable to other genres, fit their signature ones like no one else’s.

Such is the feeling I got while watching Disney’s latest family adventure “Eight Below.” The saga of eight sled dogs inadvertently stranded and left to fend for themselves within the wilds of Antarctica, this is the kind of naturalistic story just made for a feature film. Vast vistas of frozen ice and snow, cute and cuddly animals fighting to stay alive facing the harshest winter on the face of the planet; with the right touch this sort of epic wouldn’t just be good it would be spectacular.

Unfortunately, that touch does not belong to director Frank Marshall. One of the most successful producers to ever work in Hollywood (his films with Steven Spielberg include “The Color Purple,” the “Indiana Jones” trilogy, “Gremlins,” “Hook,” “Empire of the Sun” and “The Back to the Future” trilogy), the man’s directing career hasn’t been nearly as storied. While “Arachnophobia” was good fun and “Alive” was brilliantly nerve-wracking, the filmmaker’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s “Congo” was wretched and his handling of the Apollo 11 episode of the Emmy-winning “From the Earth to the Moon” was extraordinarily flat.

This newest feature showcases both sides of the director. “Eight Below” has moments of giddy exuberance recalling “Arachnophobia,” scenes of heart-wrenching survival like “Alive” and sequences of gruesome unheard of awfulness like “Congo.” There are long bits of inert staginess recalling his episode of the HBO miniseries and moments of surrealistically sublime beauty obviously inspired by Marshall’s time spent with Spielberg. Through all the highs and lows there are two constants: The story of the dogs survival in the wilderness inspires while the 150-plus day struggle of their handler Jerry Shepard (Paul Walker) to bring them home is an unmitigated bore.

Loosely based on a real-life story from 1957, the story itself the basis for the 1983 Japanese blockbuster “Nankyoku Monogtari,” the screenplay by freshman writer David DiGilio is a hodgepodge of the fantastic and maudlin, the wonderful and the terrible. The central story of the dogs, each given their own cutesy Disney name like Old Jack, Dewey and Shorty, is a grabber from the first moment the human characters are forced by a major storm to leave them stranded in the Antarctic. From escaping from their collars, facing down blinding snowstorms, feeding on Arctic seagulls and fighting off giant Leopard Seals, it is hard not to watch these sequences without coming away at least partially inspired.

On the flipside, however, is the journey of Jerry to try and get back to the animals he loves. These scenes of him flying across the country looking for funding, trying to find help, feeling sorry for himself and otherwise being a great big sourpuss are enough to make a person want to slit their wrists. Walker’s dialogues with Bruce Greenwood (who gives the film far more gravity than it deserves) go on forever, while sadsack walks on the beach with a truly terrible Moon Bloodgood (adding her name to the growing shortlist of 2006’s worst performances) are so interminable I felt like screaming. (As for the film’s other headliner, “American Pie” star Jason Biggs, the less said the better. Not because he’s bad – although he isn’t good – but because he has no reason whatsoever to actually be in the picture.)

Marshall can never get a grip on the two stories dueling for attention. “Eight Below” is fractured and difficult to embrace. Every time the director soars by putting the dogs front and center, he and his screenwriter just as quickly shoot themselves in the foot by switching channels and going back the human characters. It’s like riding an incredibly bumpy wooden roller coaster, the downward bursts maybe fun but the corners are so jarring by the time you get off the ride your back hurts so bad you can’t remember a single enjoyable thing about the experience.

That’s probably overstating it a little, but it does bring me back to my earlier comments. Marshall maybe a great producer but he has yet to show himself to be anything more than just an adequate director. I can’t help but think there is a better movie, a glorious one even, begging to be let out. More so, I know exactly who the filmmaker is to do it, the director of “The Black Stallion” and “Fly Away Home” Carroll Ballard. Under his hands, “Eight Below” could be an exquisite companion piece to his other icy classic (ironically a Disney film) “Never Cry Wolf.” It would be a glorious tale of survival and hardship, of nature battling human and animal alike for frigid supremacy. Ballard could make this movie in his sleep, and even with a hackneyed script I’m almost positive it would still score.

It isn’t his movie, however, it’s Marshall’s, and the resulting effort is as disappointing as anything else to hit screens so far this year. It doesn’t work, and even if the photography is beautiful and the dogs are an inspiration (and, for once, Walker isn’t an annoyance) it is still impossible not to walk away from “Eight Below” wanting more. It should have been better, should have been something to cherish; instead it’s just a mess, a forgotten adventure guaranteed to stay that way long after the sun has set on another cinematic dawn.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)