Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Posted on Oct 10, 2008 By Elizabeth Edwardsen

How much you enjoy Beverly Hills Chihuahua may depend on your age, or how adorable you find tiny little dressed up talking dogs. I saw the Disney movie with my 11-year-old daughter. She can't wait to see it again. I couldn't wait for it to end.

The movie tells the tale of Chloe, an absurdly spoiled Chihuahua who lives in Beverly Hills but gets lost in Mexico wearing a Harry Winston diamond collar, pink booties, and a cashmere dress.During a nail-biting (I jest) journey both geographical and moral, Chloe loses her snobby side and learns to use her real bark when she needs it. This is a kids' movie, and there's a good lesson buried among all the cute dog stuff and the scary dog fights. My problem was the good lesson was also tucked into some some very real, odious stereotypes about Mexico, Mexicans, rich people, and even Doberman Pinschers.

Two of my favorite kids' movies were the 101 Dalmations movies - both the animated and human versions. But the villains didn't represent anything real. With a few good-hearted exceptions, the Mexicans Chloe encounters seemed limited to con-rats, dog-nappers, dog fight fans, and of course the evil El Diablo, a Doberman Pinscher on a mission to kill or catch her for most of this movie. He really looks like he could eat her in one bite. There's even a bony, pacing "coyote" that escorts dogs without collars over the border into the United States.

I'll let my daughter see Beverly Hills Chihuahua again - she's old enough to know what stereotypes are, so we discussed them. I didn't think I'd have to use a cute dog movie as a lesson about stereotypes. Animal activists fear that Beverly Hills Chihuahua will lead to a surge in Chihuahua purchases and say puppy mills have been turning up the volume already in preparation for a surge in Chihuahua interest in little dogs ready to be dolled up and, sadly, surrendered by their owners when things don't work out.

I didn't leave my local theater wanting a Chihuahua. If anything, I left thinking the movie might make someone want a German Shepherd -- who is, as far as I'm concerned, the star of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Chloe never would have survived the mean streets of Mexico without the help of a handsome former police dog named Diego. One thing I'd be willing to bet is no one is going to leave there wishing they had a Doberman Pinscher.

Presence of dogs: 4
Respect for dogs: 4
Canine star quality: 4
Family friendly: 4

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Daisy Kenyon

Posted on Sep 29, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Daisy Kenyon

Twentieth Century Fox, 1947, 99 minutes

Imagine a cinematic cross between Sex and the City and the 1940 Ginger Rogers classic Kitty Foyle, and you've got this movie, in which a single New York career woman must choose between two men: one married and rich, the other single and not-so-rich.

Joan Crawford, in 1940s-era Mildred Pierce mode, plays Daisy Kenyon, the single gal in question, a commercial artist who makes illustrations for fashion magazines, living and working in a mouthwatering Greenwich Village apartment. Daisy is single yet hopeful that her Mr. Big, slick attorney Dan O'Mara (Dana Andrews) will eventually leave his wife and kids to marry her. Just as the impossible starts to happen - Dan's divorce is underway - Daisy marries returning war veteran Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda).

In the movie's early scenes, we meet Daisy's best friend Tubby, a handsome Border Collie. Strangely, Tubby disappears, never to be mentioned again for the rest of the movie - even though Daisy winds up relocating to a lovely house in Massachusetts, a locale that would be heaven to any dog, especially a Border Collie.

Although the movie as a whole is enjoyable, the mysterious dog deletion comes as a double dis - i.e. a disrespectful disappointment - and it's even more of a letdown when you consider that the director of this flick was none other than the highly esteemed Otto Preminger, who ought to have known better than to just forget about a canine character. So go ahead and add this title to your Netflix queue - but be sure to also add another movie in which the dog stays in the picture. For a list of FetchDog's recommendations, go here.
Presence of dogs: 1
Respect for dogs: 0
Canine star quality: 4
Family friendly: 1

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A Little Vicious

Posted on Aug 20, 2008 By Martha Garvey

The Doc Tank, 1991, 30 minutes

Available at The Doc Tank (www.thedoctank.com)

To view a clip, go here: http://www.thedoctank.com/galley

Once upon a time in the late 1980s, there was a dog named Bandit who lived in a sketchy part of Stamford, Connecticut. Then, Bandit bit a neighbor brandishing a broom, got locked up, returned home, and then bit his owner. Though the owner, an elderly African American man named Lamon Redd, defended his dog Bandit as a consistent, excellent watch dog, the local authorities put the dog on death row, in part because he was a so-called "vicious pit bull."

Unlike so many dogs labeled dangerous, Bandit got lucky - thanks to his owner, a legal defense team, and an eccentric dog trainer named Vicki Hearne, a poet, scholar, and philosopher who wrote lyrical books about the lives of animals. This documentary, warmly narrated by Kevin Bacon, focuses on Bandit's stay of execution while he is trained to be a good dog by Hearne.

In anticipation of a crucial temperament test, Hearne trains Bandit on a rustic farm far from the tough Stamford streets. When we see Bandit perched on the front seat of a car as it approaches his bucolic training grounds, you can almost see him thinking, "What the hell is this?" Hearne seems to feel that Bandit represents a chance to regain Eden. Maybe. Nevertheless, while occasionally we see Bandit resist Hearne's training, he also appears to be a smart, funny dog who even climbs a ladder at her urging.  

Producer-director Immy Humes deftly captures the eccentricities of both the people who love Bandit most of all - trainer Vicki Hearne and Lamon Redd - with a great assist from cinematographer Jean de Segonzac and some sly music choices. Bandit's incarceration and rehabilitation illuminate more than a single dog's story; they expose some not-such-nice assumptions about race and class. Be warned that Hearne wasn't ever a warm and fuzzy trainer, and that while a kind of justice was done, there is no Disney movie ending for this quirky, sturdy documentary.  

When the film was originally released in the early 1990s, it appeared on the American public television series P.O.V. and on Britain's Channel 4 and received an Academy Award nomination. But Bandit's story must be told at a breathless pace to fit 30 minutes. According to an article in The Bark, Humes is considering revisiting her footage on Bandit.

Sadly, Hearne, whose books have been reprinted, and who wrote a whole book about Bandit, died in 2001. Let's hope wherever she is now, there are lots of dogs to love.


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Red

Posted on Aug 14, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Magnolia Pictures, 2008, 98 minutes

Is there any way to review this movie without giving some of it away? Probably not. And for many dog owners, the movie's lacerating catalyst may be too much to bear.    

So let's get it out of the way: this film, based on a novel by horror writer Jack Ketchum begins with widower Avery Ludlow (Brian Cox) seeing his 14-year-old dog Red shot dead before his eyes by Danny, a sociopathic teenager. Avery, a courtly, mournful Korean War vet who runs a country store, doesn't want vengeance. He wants justice. He wants Danny, a rich kid with no soul (a seething Noel Fisher), and Danny's two accomplices, include Danny's vulnerable brother Harold (Kyle Gallner), to apologize. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Unfortunately for Ludlow - and the movie - Danny and Harold's father is played by Tom Sizemore, mean and influential, in a bizarre peroxide blond dye job that suggests punk rock, not land baron. Sizemore's scenery chewing signals the movie's drift into weirdness. The film's power lies in Brian Cox's quiet, aching performance. Red's two brief scenes establish him in Avery's heart, and ours, and the rest of the film reveals people who love their dogs, and reach out to Avery in his loss. As Red's absence sinks in, Cox's face grows longer and longer, but his eyes remain dry. A shot of the door that Red used to scratch will be enough to bring most dog owners to tears. But not Avery. It would be a relief to see him cry.

However, when it becomes clear that justice will not be served in the courts, the film's narrative jumps the tracks into 1970s vengeance flick: a little Eastwood, a lot of Bronson, and a whole bunch of guns. A TV news story by a pretty, crusading reporter (Kim Dickens) unwittingly incites more violence, and while there is a resolution, it must be accomplished with another peculiar tone change, some dubious plotting, and a puppy ex machina.

The bizarre shifts in tone can partially be explained by the credits - the original director was apparently replaced. What's good about this movie is very good, and that is most of the cast, particularly the teenagers, who hold their own against Cox. What's weird is very weird. Those who are Dean Koontz or Stephen King fans may find it more to their liking. Tenderhearted dog owners: Stay far away.

Presence of dogs:
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The Bear

Posted on Aug 11, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Sony Pictures, 1988, 93 minutes
 
It's rare for a movie that portrays dogs as "bad guys" to win over dog lovers. Yet Jean-Jacques Annaud's documentary-style masterpiece about an adorable, orphaned bear cub managed to win over this dog lover.
 
As the cub and the older Kodiak bear who adopts him are stalked by two determined hunters across British Columbia's late-nineteenth-century wilderness, I was definitely not rooting for the pack of mixed-breed hunting dogs the men employ to help bring the bear down - even though several of them reminded me of my own beloved dogs. (The big bear is played by a performer named Bart, a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall, 1,500-pound hunk of natural acting talent who played opposite Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins, and Brad Pitt in a long career that ended with his death in 2000.)
 
And yet, when some of the hunting dogs are injured and one - the younger hunter's favorite - must be put out of her misery, you realize with sadness that they were only following humans' orders. That's when the director's message comes through loud and clear: big-game hunting is terrible for all involved, not just the quarry.
 
This film makes such a powerful case for showing mercy to animals that American Humane awarded it a special citation. From the film-industry watchdog that ensures "No animals were harmed" on the movie sets they monitor, that's praise from Caesar. By showing the harm hunters do to animals, "The Bear" has what it takes to inspire more people to forsake this blood sport.

Presence of dogs:
Respect for dogs:
Canine star quality:
Family friendly:

 

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