Barking at the Big Screen: Hotel for Dogs

This is the start of Dog O’Day’s film review series, and we’ll be looking at the 2009 film Hotel for Dogs, starring Emma Roberts, Jake T. Austin, Don Cheadle and Lisa Kudrow.

Hotel for Dogs, a 2009 movie loosely based on a 1971 novel of the same name by pioneering young-adult author Lois Duncan, is the sort of movie you have to switch your brain off before enjoying – which, given that much of its casts’ best-known roles at the time were from late-2000s Disney Channel and Nickelodeon TV shows, isn’t that surprising.

Roberts and Austin portray con-artist siblings Andi and Bruce, who are on their fifth foster home in the past two years. They exasperate their social worker Bernie (Cheadle) on a regular basis, and connive ways to take care of their scruffy pooch Friday.

While running from the police they discover an abandoned hotel, the Hotel Francis Duke, where Friday meets two other strays whom Bruce promptly names Lenny and Georgia.

With the help of their friends Dave (Johnny Simmons) and Heather (Kyla Pratt), who are both employees at the Primary Paws pet shop, they clean up the derelict building and make it hospitable to their growing pack of canines.

With the addition of a fifth member of the team in Mark (Troy Gentile), they branch out into a citywide dog-smuggling organization to foil the dogcatchers of the Department of Animal Control, while Bruce makes a variety of Rube Goldberg machines in the hotel to take care of the dogs’ feeding, exercise, car-riding and waste-disposal needs.

After Andi and Bruce turn down Bernie’s new placement for them three hours away (far from their current foster parents, wannabe rockers Lois and Carl), everything predictably falls apart. An acquaintance of Andi’s reveals that she’s in the foster system, much to her horror, and the dogs tear everything apart in the hotel when their food machine breaks down.

When the police find the dogs, they are hauled off to the pound and Andi and Bruce are separated, but quickly get the group back together to raid the pound and humiliate the Animal Control officers.

The ensuing chase creates a circus at the hotel, with the dogs, the teens, the police, the entire Animal Control force, a horde of curious bystanders and several TV stations all present. Bernie makes a inspirational speech, and in the face of a crushingly poor PR fiasco if they don’t back down, the police decide to allow the dogs to stay.

Bernie and his wife adopt Andi and Bruce, and the city raises funds to turn the Hotel Francis Duke into the Hotel for Dogs, which is a combination no-kill shelter and boarding kennel. Dave works the front desk, Heather is a greeter, even Carl and Lois were hired for the entertainment. Bernie’s family manages the hotel, and everything apparently ends happily ever after.

If you overlook all the numerous crimes committed in the name of rescuing dogs being a good deed, that is. And rescuing dogs (and other animals) is important. But this movie is not that great overall.

The characters are all pretty one-dimensional and flat, with not much character growth, but the focus was on the dogs in the editing, so that’s understandable.

However, it does have good music, and it’s a pleasant diversion to spend an hour and a half on.

This movie takes place roughly in Kansas City, assuming that the “Central City” in this case is also the Central City of The Flash. That could create some fun fanfiction, perhaps.

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