DVD Review: Hotel for Dogs (70 of them!)

DVD Review: Hotel For Dogs with Emma Roberts and Don Cheadle (Paramount Studio, 2009/2017, 1 hour and 39 minutes, PG) See the trailer here.

It’s Time to Revisit the Canine Classics

It’s that time of year again when the family stays home on a chilly Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening to watch a movie - together with the dogs, a pizza delivered and some popcorn – maybe even a neighbor kid or two.

So, let’s revisit some canine classics like Hotel for Dogs (2009) with Julia Roberts’ niece Emma (also known for her Nancy Drew) and Don Cheadle, the Academy Award nominee for Hotel Rwanda.

A Dog’s Eye View of New York City

It all starts with Friday, the whitest cutest dog in all of New York City, a young human boy Bruce (11 years old) and his sister Andi (16) – a duo in crime with Bruce a budding young Rube Goldberg*, and Andi, a consummate liar when necessary.

The cast includes “foster parents from hell” (questionable rock stars [one being Lisa Kudrow!] who lock food away), and a perfect social worker named Bernie.

Oh, and nearly 70 dogs, the predictable ‘car chase’ in reverse and a predictable ending that everyone will love!!

How the Hotel Francis Duke became the Hotel for Dogs

Thinly disguised New York City or Chicago is the setting for this underrated family flick about a brother-sister duo in foster care and the pet dog they take care of, sneakily, since the fosters dislike them and dogs.

The kids and dog stumble onto and into an abandoned hotel, the Hotel Francis Duke, and somehow start collecting stray dogs along with three good friends in crime (including a love interest) but also have to play keep-away from the police and Animal Control.

How they manage to do all this and find a new family makes for inspiring family fare.

Because it’s about family and all about family.

Incidentals

The pet food store van has paws and a tail and two of the canines also begin a relationship – Chinese Crested Romeo and white poodle Juliet.

A Dog’s Nose, Up Close and Personal

See New York (Central City) from the point of view of a dog - a pug, a lemon beagle, a St. Bernard, a lab, a Boston, a Mastiff, a Shar Pei, a Golden – Georgia and Henry and Lenny and Chelsea and Cooper, but most of the dogs are all-Americans and each shelter dog was adopted at the end of the movie!

First, A Book

Lois Duncan wrote Hotel for Dogs in 1971 and rewrote it in advance of the movie coming out, with movie details, slightly changed from the original. Duncan appears in the movie and then published two sequels: News for Dogs in 2009 followed by Movie for Dogs (2010).

And, did you know Duncan also wrote a slew of other books, including I Know What You Did Last Summer?

*The contraptions young Bruce comes up with are worth the price of admission: automatic feeding machines that pour kibble from Pedigree dog food cans into bowls at precisely 5 pm, fountains that dogs pee in and exit from by stepping on a platform that causes the fountain to spray water in a self-cleaning manner, ‘toilets’ that collect and bag the poop then put them on an assembly line to toss outside, mechanical ball fetching (throwing) machines, simulated car rides complete with changing scenery and wind, mechanical sheep on bumper cars for border collie Shep to herd, an automatic car wash for dogs – you get the picture. Now, get the movie!