Good Boy!
dir. Hoffman
Opens Fri Oct 10
Various Theaters
Ever since Mr. Ed first got into the Jiff, the profit margin of talking animals has been tough for Hollywood to ignore. Lately, new advances in computer animation and trend-happy producers have resulted in a veritable Ark-load of critters that refuse to put a cork in it. The new CGI dog lip saga Good Boy! never achieves the lump-in-the-throat quality of, say, Babe, or even Benji the Hunted, but it easily avoids the wretched Snow Dogs depths, with enough glimmers of over-the-head wit to keep reluctant chaperones at least semi-awake.
Set in the usual Spielbergian corner of suburbia, the film follows a lonely pre-teen (Liam Aiken) whose lifelong wish is granted when he stumbles across a dog wandering around a mysterious crater. Thanks to a malfunctioning interstellar communication thingy, he soon discovers that his new pooch is actually a hyper-intelligent alien (from Sirius, naturally) sent to Earth to teach the local population how to cast off their choke chains and overthrow The Man. This high-concept melding of E.T., Dr. Doolittle, and Roots is goofy enough to intrigue, and the casting of such unlikely celeb voices as Vanessa Redgrave and Cheech Marin only adds to the surreal results.
While never straying too far from the conventions of the genre, writer/ director John Hoffman has delivered an agreeably two-tiered kid flick; children will dig the copious fart and crotch-sniffing jokes, while adults will groove on the mildly subversive elements (yes, these mutts use hackneyed pop culture references and bad celebrity impressions, but they also accidentally huff paint fumes and serve openly gay masters). He's aided by a generous assist from the wizards at the Jim Henson company, who allow the animals to enunciate at least as clearly as the human actors. Anyone looking for a matinee-priced babysitter could do worse.
