Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Chihuahuas are very cute dogs, and I'm sure there's a cute movie that could be made about them. Beverly Hills Chihuahua is not that movie. It is a cynical and soulless experience, and is an all around very bad movie. How bad is it? Whenever I'm watching a children's movie, I look around the audience once in a while to try to see how kids are reacting, or I try to listen to their reactions. The kids at my mostly full screening were not reacting at all. They weren't laughing, weren't smiling, and certainly weren't engaged. No matter how many cute dogs this movie throws up on the screen, there's no hiding that there's very little entertainment to be found here.

The movie wants to give us an inside look at the world of dogs, specifically the pampered and spoiled variety that celebrities carry around in their handbags. It's amazing how quickly the screenwriters drop this potential bit of satire, and give us an uninspired road trip and chase picture. The dogs talk in this movie, but it is not convincing. The animation when the dogs' mouths are moving looks like the editor has put the film on a continuous loop, in an effort to make them look like they're talking. Compare the much more sophisticated special effects work in the Babe movies (which are over 10 years old) to the stuff found here. Then again, in those films, the animals actually talked about interesting things. In this movie, the dogs talk endlessly, but never say anything remotely special. If animals could actually talk, I would hope they would have more to say than "talk to the paw".

The title dog is a pampered pooch named Chloe (voice by Drew Barrymore), who lives a privileged existence of designer doggie outfits and diamond collars with her owner, an entrepreneur named Viv (Jamie Lee Curtis, in a minor role that barely registers as a cameo). Viv has to go off on a business trip, and leaves her irresponsible adult niece, Rachel (Piper Perabo), behind to housesit and take care of Chloe. When some of Rachel's friends invite her on a road trip to Mexico, she jumps at the chance, and takes Chloe along. The spoiled dog doesn't like being around Rachel or her friends, so she decides to head off on her own. While wandering the streets of Mexico, little Chloe is kidnapped by a criminal named Vazquez (Jose Maria Yazpik), who specializes in illegal dog fights. Chloe eventually escapes with the help of a German Shepard named Delgado (voice by Andy Garcia), a former police dog who was kicked off the force when he lost his sense of smell in a fight. As the two dogs make their way across Mexico to get back home, Rachel has figured out that Chloe has gone missing, and enlists the help of Viv's gardener Sam (Manolo Cardona) and Sam's Chihuahua Papi (voice by George Lopez) to find her before Viv comes back home and realizes her prized dog is gone.

I follow the belief that any idea for a film can work as long as the right approach is taken. Even as kids' entertainment, Beverly Hills Chihuahua is a dead zone conceptually, at its screenplay level, and especially with its humor. The human characters act as if they've never experienced anything resembling a thought or even an idea, while the dogs yammer on needlessly about nothing in particular. We're just supposed to be amused by the fact that the dogs are talking. I admit, I smiled when I saw little Papi jumping up on his hind legs, trying to see over a fence to look at Chloe, who he is smitten with. That smile came more from the dog itself, than what was coming out of his mouth. The movie assembles a talented voice cast for its animal cast. Cheech Marin is a rat who gets wrapped up in the search for Chloe. Edward James Olmos is Diablo, a rottweiler who works for the villain. While I'm on the subject, why do villains in these kind of movies always have rottweilers? It's like a bizarre form of canine stereotyping. Just once, I'd like to see a dog movie where the rottweiler is the hero.

The movie was directed by Raja Gosnell, who has more than his share of bland family films under his belt. He kicked off his career with the awful Home Alone 3, and went on to stuff like Big Momma's House and Yours, Mine, and Ours. He even has experience with movies about talking dogs, as he directed both of the live action Scooby-Doo films. My guess is those films were why he was hired to do this one, as he brings absolutely no visual style to the story. He simply points and shoots the whole way through. At least he's in good company, as nothing else stands out about this movie either. It's something that will keep kids quiet for 90 minutes or so, that's it. It doesn't want to engage their minds, or make them think about anything. I personally feel that kids are smarter than most adults take them for, and they deserve better than this. I'm going to go so far to say that this is probably the worst film Gosnell has done, which is saying something when your past credits include a movie built around Martin Lawrence in drag and a fat suit.

As each scene and gag subsequently fell flat in Beverly Hills Chihuahua, I found myself thinking back on the film's famous trailer, which features a large group of singing Chihuahuas dancing and partying around an Aztec temple. Not only is that sequence not even featured in the movie (even though the dogs do visit an Aztec temple at one point), it's much more lively than anything that actually appears in the movie itself. Whoever made that trailer knew how to grab kids' attention, as it got them talking about this movie. What a shame that all that excitement it generated was for this tired and generic movie that suffers from a complete lack of imagination and purpose.

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