Film Review--Hotel for Dogs

Hotel for Dogs
directed by Thor Freudenthal
written by Jeff Lowell, Robert Schooley
starring Emma Roberts, Jake T. Austin, Don Cheadle, Johnny Simmons, Kyla Pratt, Lisa Kudrow, Kevin Dillon, Troy Gentile, Ajay Naidu

An early contender for worst film of the year, this tawdry exercise in absolute pablum features too many dogs, hideous and charmless children, and the sadly wasted talents of Don Cheadle and Lisa Kudrow.

Indeed, one has to wonder how Don Cheadle chooses what he’s going to allow to be the vehicle through which he emotes grandly and eloquently. How did his agent sell this film because even on paper it screams Nickelodeon tv movie. It should have never made it beyond a small screen treatment but somebody greased the right poles and it inexplicably received a wide release. Don Cheadle essentially gives on of the best great actor in a terrible movie performances of recent memory. He’s consistently the only thing worth paying attention to in this ludicrous retread. Lisa Kudrow manages to get everything she can out of her role and does a pretty amazing job with limited material. She’s funny but it’s mostly her posture and body movements which score the biggest laughs. She’s just so pent up and restrained and her character does most when she’s not actually saying anything or reacting to a situation before her.

Firstly, the kids all lack even a modicum of personality except perhaps for the fat kid Mark (Gentile) who acts a bit outrageously like all fat kids do in these films. Gentile always brings a freshness into his films because he’s a fairly gifted comedic actor with excellent timing and within the limited script he manages to elicit a few laughs in this film. Otherwise, it’s the most charisma deprived gallery of kiddies one could ever hope to find. Even Gentile burns off after a while leaving a chubby husk doing tricks for food. It isn’t strictly a wretched script holding this film face down in the feces but it doesn’t help. It’s true that whenever the kids are on screen, the audience cannot wait for them to be off the screen. It’s fairly simple for me. In order, the most desirable things to see in this film are: Don Cheadle, a few of the dogs, the sidewalks and eateries, Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon, a few more dogs, the closing credits, more dogs, and perhaps maybe a kid or two at the most.

Unfortunately, one has to deal with the kids in this film as at least one of them is in nearly every scene that doesn’t involve the dogs tearing through the hotel. I can’t quite ascertain just what the young people in this film are supposed to elicit out of the audience. They are so utterly generic they might as well have been cut out of a JC Penney newspaper advert. Are we supposed to identify with them and vicariously experience their journey as our own? Regardless, it’s just not a journey that is infused with any particularly fresh ideas.

The story is straightforward enough. Two moppets named Andi (Roberts) and Bruce (Austin) have a dog named Friday. Friday runs afoul of the law and gets himself locked in the pen where our heroes spring him. On the way back to their foster home, where they have not told their parents about Friday’s existence for reasons left out of the film, Friday sneaks through an opening into a derelict hotel. The kids follow him in and discover two more dogs inhabit the joint. Ultimately, this leads to Andi and Bruce rescuing every stray dog they can find and setting them up in the hotel.

The kids lost their parents five years ago and have bounced from home to home since that time. They hate their current parents, the Scudders, Lois (Kudrow) and Carl (Dillon), who spend most of their time writing dodgy guitar driven pop ditties and ignoring the kids. Naturally, the grinding wheels of the Child Welfare Services system threaten to turn the lovelies into mulch. But, such a sappy film as this is not going to let that happen because happy endings are the stuff from which such movie experiences are made. It couldn’t possibly be any other way and the film delivers a sickly, predictable, and saccharine ending that pleases noone in the end.

Well trained and cinematic dogs are always an easy sell in films. They are cute, they do tricks, and they are mostly infused with charismatic appeal. In this film it’s no different as several of the dogs stand out as having purely adorable personalities that are a joy to behold. However, a film needs much more than dogs to be effective and this film fails to deliver a story worth getting behind. Too much of a good thing can have an adverse effect on any experience and in this film there is simply too much footage of the dogs gallivanting about doing what dogs know best. With no story behind all the canine nuttiness, the scenes with the dogs actually become tiresome after a fashion.

Despite everything else that is wrong with this film the gadgetry that is devised to keep the dogs occupied in the hotel is somewhat ingenious. Great work went into creating the various contraptions that feed and entertain the dogs when the humans are elsewhere. Of course we are supposed to believe that a kid, however technically gifted, is able to construct this elaborate schema but it’s just one of many improbabilities in this film. Regardless, they are entertaining and certainly add something of value to the film.

I wonder how difficult it is to find actors who are viable enough not to be overtaken by animals in films. There just has to be a great number of young talent who could have carried this film with much more charisma and individuality than these dreadful, cookie-cutter models of everything that is wrong with contemporary American cinema. They offer nothing, serve no purpose, and deliver not a single moment of joyful surrender in their performances. This seems to be a trend that is only becoming more pronounced over time. Yet a few like young Troy Gentile are carving out a niche for themselves as energetic, thrilling and dynamic personalities who will one day be able to carry a film on their own. But they are clearly the exception and this film proves it.

Overall, this film offers nothing of note that can possibly be considered edifying. The dogs are entertaining up to a point, Don Cheadle is brilliantly understated and straightforward, Kyla Platt gives a memorable turn as Bernie’s (Cheadle) wife Heather, and there are many fine machines that serve particular purposes. Otherwise, it’s a drab, flat affair that puts the film on the fast track to the worst film of this or any year. It would be a total write off without Cheadle but even he is not able to rescue the film from its overarching inanity. He’s only in it for a handful of scenes and cannot prevent the train from leaving the tracks turning its entire passenger load into scorched sausage.