Customer Reviews

Hotel for Dogs (Widescreen Edition)

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I know, I know! Not every movie has to have a character building lesson. This movie however, celebrates the opposite-lying, stealing, breaking and entering, and cheating. In the end, the children were celebrated as heroes dispite their bad behavior.

Most of the details of this movie have been covered in other reviews. There three issues with this movie. First of all, the kids exhibit criminal behavior from beginning to end of the film. Apparently, this is all completely excused by the end of the film, because it was all in a good cause. I would have felt a lot better about the kids if they had actually gone out and got a job and taken care of their dog in that manner. Second, the whole plot is really weak. The kids have no money, but some how have enough money to put together an amazing number of contraptions and get the power turned on in an old hotel. If they had that money to begin with, why are they pawning rocks for twenty bucks? Finally, the acting is not very good. Kids exhibit little emotion and the adult characters are two dimensional, to say the least.

The only saving grace of the movie are the dogs which are well trained and cute.

A friend of mine made the comment that modern people care more about stray dogs than homeless people.
Orphans and foster parenting for older children has been a bad western cultural
problem since before Dickens. Wars and accidents have secondary casualties.
Here a boy and his sister have a dog that their foster parents don't allow,
so they go to a lot of trouble to take care of it.
The result is they find a run down old hotel that already has two dog residents.
Together with the young high school boy from the pet store
they take on the pound system of killing stray dogs.
The ending is happy here as with many kids movies.
I didn't really like the movie much: the parallel of orphans with stray dogs
is just a little much for me.

We bought this to play for the kids at church, and I was skeptical. It's a better movie than the title implies. Lot's of cliches' but reasonably well acted. And we didn't have to worry about content.

I gave my mom this movie for Mother's day, and we both liked it! The dogs were awesome and cute! Andi and Bruce live with crappy foster parents and try to hide their dog, Friday. They soon find a rundown hotel and give stray dogs a place to eat and sleep. The more dogs they find, the more help they'll need from friends who work at a pet store, and a kid with a police scanner. It was very funny and I highly recommend you let your pet stay at the HOTEL FOR DOGS!!!

I took my son (4.5 years old), my daughter (10) and two other kids (11 and 8) to this movie over Spring Break. I didn't know much about it, but we all loved it.

It's a good caper movie, featuring a teen girl and her brother's solution to keeping their dog in spite of living in a foster home.

One thing I loved about it was the lack of crude humor (except a few dog bodily function jokes), and also the lack of romance. There was a little bit of romantic interest, but it was not the focus of the story, and I personally don't think that movies targeted to preschoolers on up need to feature a love story (but most of them, from Cinderella on up do).

If you are a dog person, this film will be a joy. If you are a cat person, well best look elsewhere. Cute kids, cute dogs, mean adults (save Don Cheadle), a run down hotel - recepie for a fun movie.

Bruce and Andi are orphan brother and sister. Bernie loves these two kids and tries to place them in a foster home together. Their latest home is not exactly nurturing, so the two turn toward the street and stray dogs. The stray they have had for a number of years, runs away from the dog catcher into an abandoned hotel. Eventually Bruce and Andi save many dogs and take care of them in this hotel. Bruce is 11 and happens to be brilliant at mechanical engineering.

Giving nothing away in this story, it's the evil dog catchers, the evil adults / foster parents, the not so bright police, versus the super smart kids.

It's a pleasant film, made better if you love dogs. It's very predictible. The cast is interesting. Don Cheadle as Bernie, has had much better roles, but he made do with the script he was given (Traitor is a hugely better film with Cheadle). Emma Roberts is sweet, pretty, and smart (Nancy Drew) - expect to see much more and better from her. Her brother, Bruce is played by a very capable Jake T. Austin. Kyla Pratt (Dr. Doolite 4 - Tail to the Chief) is a friend of the group, has probably peaked as an actress. The horrible singer and even worse strict mother is played by Lisa Kudrow (Pheobe on Friends), has been awful (this time also) in a series of not so good movies lately. Troy Gentile is the overweight kid that joins the group about half way through the film. He doesn't do a very good job here, but you may remember him in Tenacious D and Nacho Libre. Aside from Kudrow, a pretty decent cast.

Oh and don't forget the dogs. All shapes, sizes, breads, and ages. There's a dog in here that everyone will love.

Film wise - well the focus was always on, and camera movement was solid (not much handheld garbage). The sound was well recorded - dialog was clear. The editing was decent, it could use about a solid 10 minutes removed of the hour 35 minute film, but who's counting. There were some strange CG effects that made the movie look other worldly off and on. It's not clear if that was the point or they didn't spend enough money on the effects. The doves flying off at the end were just too far over the top.

Rated PG. There's a fair amount of poop humor (that was 5 things, no poop and pee are one thing, no I've stepped in them both and they are two things). There is a scene in the pound where a dog is taken to the back of the room on a leash. There is a cut to a few other scenes. Then the film comes back to the man with an empty leash reentering the room. For young children, that might require a bit of explaining. Otherwise, no violence, no strong language, and certainly no nudity. A film for all ages.

The DVD is chock full of the usual efluvia of more or less useless bonus features. In fact there is likely an hour or more of these features.

A nice family film for dog lovers.

Length:: 0:40 Mins

Kids love dogs. How else to explain the success of last December's Marley & Me or this nondescript comedy based on the Lois Duncan bestseller? In it, two foster kids secretly adopt a dog and when he runs away, they find him in an abandoned hotel along with a few other strays. Naturally, they decide to care for all of them and hilarity ensues. By the way, if you enjoyed the book, a sequel is coming out soon. I'll bet a sequel comes out for the movie as well.

We took our six-year-old granddaughter to see this movie and we all enjoyed it. I do dog rescue and my heart loved the message in the film that it is not okay to throw away our dogs when we are tired of them. The kids in the movie get stuck with some horrible foster parents and they want to stay together--brother, sister and dog. It is not all heart string pulling though; there are tons of funny moments in the film. A definite family movie worth seeing. Power Path to Love