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Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment // PG // March 3, 2009
List Price: $34.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
When I was growing up in the 60's Disney's live action films were must-sees. The adventures of Herbie the Love Bug and the antics of the Dexter Riley and his pals at
Chloe is the pampered, designer clothes wearing pet
Irresponsible Rachel makes some effort to keep to the schedule, but when her friends call up and invite her to go to
Once there, Chloe gets upset at being left in the hotel room, she wants to go dancing too, and manages to sneak out the door, operate the elevator and escape! Outside in the real world she doesn't last long before she's stolen and taken about 1000 miles away to
After Chloe is gone, the head of the dog fight organization realizes that the diamond collar she was wearing means that she could be ransomed. (He can apparently tell cubic zirconium from diamonds from across a room.) So he puts a GPS collar on his most vicious dog, Diablo, and sends him out to track down Chloe. Will Chloe and Delgado manage to escape and get back to
I went into this movie with exceedingly low expectations, hoping for a few laughs at most, but this film failed to live up to even that. Even if you ignore the things that adults would pick up on (the trite plot, the series of amazing coincidences, the abysmal geography, the fact that the dogs travel hundreds of miles on foot in a day, and the horrible dialog including "come with me if you want to live.") this still wasn't a very good film. Most of the animals just weren't likable. Chloe wasn't adorable, just spoiled and the thieving rat, included as a comic relief, wasn't funny. A lot of the plot points didn't make any sense. Why would a rat want a diamond collar? What could he do with it? Why did Vivian's landscaper travel to
The worst offense that this movie commits is the message it tries to relate. At one point Chloe is lost in the desert and she encounters a group of wild
The movie isn't really a comedy either (as the trailer implies.) There are a couple of moments that are supposed to be funny (the piñata running around the store for example and that stupid rat) but this is an adventure film that lacks drama, mainly because it's so hard to care for any of the characters.
The Blu-ray Disc:
Video:
If this was the first Blu-ray disc I had ever seen, I'd probably be pretty impressed. As it is, this 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 2.40:1 image looks good but not outstanding. The level of detail is good and the blacks were fine. Some of the colors look like they've been artificially boosted, especially when Rachael and Chloe first go
Audio:
The DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 is a bit overkill for this film. Aside from the music scenes there isn't much to the film audio-wise. The songs do have a nice range, but the subwoofer rarely gets used, even at the end when Chloe 'finds her bark' the low ranges are underutilized. The dialog is crisp and clear and every irritating high-pitched squeak from the dogs is heard.
Extras:
There's an audio commentary by director Raja Gosnell that's pretty much a waste of time. If I had enjoyed the movie maybe I would have appreciated the commentary more, but as it is I was pretty underwhelmed. He talks about working with dogs and filming in
As for the video features, the disc starts out with Legend of the
There are 25 minutes worth of deleted scenes, all of which deserved to be on the cutting room floor. We also get a painfully unfunny gag reel, Blooper Scooper, which doesn't actually include many bloopers. It might have been funny to hear one of the voice actors mess up their lines, but this is mainly scenes of animals not following their cues. A trainer says "sit" and the dog takes a step forward. If that sounds like knee-slapping comedy to you, you'll enjoy it.
Finally this disc is Blu-ray Live enabled, though there wasn't any content available at the time of this review. Has there ever been any interesting Blu-ray Live material? I can't recall any.
Final Thoughts:
This is just a kid's film. Why be so hard on it? Because there are bad children's films, and this is one of them. It's not funny, the plot is very disjointed, and the characters aren't' likable. When all is said and done Chloe hasn't changed and is just as obnoxious as at the beginning of the film. Add into that the fact that dog fighting plays a significant role in the film (how'd you like to explain that to a 6 year old?) and you've got a movie that just isn't very good. There are a lot of kid's films involving animals that are good (Homeward Bound comes to mind.) You don't need to see this one. Skip it.
Note: The images in this review are not from the Blu-ray disc and do not necessarily represent the image quality on the disc.
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