Speed RacerRelease Date: Jan. 16Director: Thor FreudenthalWriter: Jeff Lowell, Bob
Schooley, Mark McCorkleCinematographer: Michael GradyStarring: Emma Roberts, Jake T.
Austin, Don Cheadle, Johnny Simmons, Kyla Pratt, Lisa Kudrow
Studio/Run Time: Paramount
Pictures, 100 mins.
There are movies that work for children
and there are movies that work for all ages, and while I, as a
grownup, prefer the latter, I'll have to admit that the kids in my
screening of Hotel for Dogs liked it just fine. It doesn't
offer much to the bored chauffeur-parents sitting next to them, and
it highlights, as children’s films often do, the rare abilities of
the folks at Pixar to tell complex, engaging tales like Toy Story
and WALL*E in a way that holds the interest of children and
adults alike. But Hotel for Dogs is harmless fun, and, if
nothing else, it offers an excuse to project a hundred adorable dogs
onto a giant screen.Speed RacerThe film is a fantasy that takes place
in a fictional city, but it's not the kind of place where dogs talk
or solve crimes. It's the kind of place where abandoned children
house abandoned pets in a giant abandoned building, and it's the kind
of place where—spoiler alert?—all abandoned parties eventually
find loving caretakers. From snout to tail, the film is squeaky
clean. The harshest utterance happens in the climax when a girl
refers to one of the city's animal-control thugs as a
"coverall-wearing goon". To his face! Oh, snap! And even
though comedies these days must meet a quota of poop jokes, the ones
in Hotel for Dogs are as tasteful as they can be; the
offending stuff is seen only in opaque, neatly sealed bags.
Much of the fun comes from the way
young Bruce, using skills learned from his dead father, builds clever
Rube Goldberg contraptions that give the hotel's four-legged
residents the time of their lives. When Bruce and his older sister,
Andi, bring a few neighborhood dog lovers into their crazy scheme,
the film captures some of the spirit of Our Gang or Pippi
Longstocking, stories about kids left to their own devices. But
those moments are brief, and the contraptions are shot so chaotically
it's sometimes hard to appreciate the boy's ingenuity.
Still, the film is innocuous enough.
Lisa Kudrow seems to be having fun in a largely thankless role as one
of Andi and Bruce's negligent (and unlikely) foster parents. Don
Cheadle is the kindly social worker, and although he usually just
needs to stand around looking concerned, he also gets to deliver the
one grown-up laugh in the film. To see how the movie is engineered,
just watch what happens when dreamy teen Dave turns away from
co-worker Heather every time cute Andi walks in the room: We get a
shot of poor, rejected Heather smiling. A look of disappointment or
jealousy might have turned her into Andi's rival, but that little
smile nudges the inevitable teen romance on its merry, unobstructed
way, and reserves all negativity for a few goony adults. If this were
Vertigo, Heather would be Midge and she'd be pulling her hair
out. I may be the only critic to say this, but let me be clear: Hotel
for Dogs is no Vertigo, not least because this Midge is a
team player, channeling her energies into saving cast-off pets in the
most logical way possible, by building them a techno-hotel downtown.