Hotel for Dogs: One Paw Up

One of the perks of White House living is getting to see current movies in the comfort of your own stately mansion. Which begs the question: What will the new First Family select for its first screening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Steven Soderbergh's five-hour epic Che? Doubtful. My money is on Hotel for Dogs, a resolutely chirpy, exceedingly safe family film aimed squarely and shamelessly at Malia and Sasha Obama's puppy-loving demographic. (See pictures of Presidential First Dogs.)

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Orphaned siblings Andi (Emma Roberts of Nancy Drew), 16, and 11-year-old Bruce (Jake T. Austin of TV's Wizards of Waverly Place) have been in five foster homes since their parents died three years ago. Thanks to a combination of determination and Bruce's mechanical ingenuity, they've managed to keep their dog Friday with them secretly the whole time. Their latest foster parents, Lois (Lisa Kudrow) and Carl Scudder (Kevin Dillon), are such dimwits they haven't noticed Friday swiping the bacon off their breakfast plates. (Apparently there are characters dopier than Phoebe Buffay and Johnny Drama.)

After Friday has a close encounter with Animal Control, Andi reconsiders the wisdom of keeping their beloved pet; maybe she and Bruce aren't giving him the stable home every clever Jack Russell terrier deserves. If the Scudders knew about him, they'd likely puree him for dinner. It almost seems as though we're about to head into some tough ethical territory, a sort of tween version of the 2008 critics' darling Wendy and Lucy, which featured Michelle Williams wrestling with the bleak prospect that her beloved dog might have a better life with someone else. Then Friday leads his young owners into an abandoned hotel vacant but for two adorable stray dogs, and suggests, with a sidewise crook of his fluffy white head, that he'd prefer boarding at the Hotel Francis Duke to Chez Scudder anyway.

The plot is a massive indulgence of the desire to adopt with abandon that generally happens when children visit a shelter. With the help of young pet-store employee, Dave (Johnny Simmons), who provides discounted kibble and makes Andi's heart beat faster, his sassy sidekick Heather (Kyla Pratt) and a neighborhood kid (Troy Gentile) Andi and Bruce are soon actively recruiting stray dogs. The movie shifts into slapstick mode, much of it centered on the dining and bathroom habits of the hundred or so hotel guests.

The dogs are remarkably well-behaved and easy to train and exhibit no desire to examine each other's privates. Or for that matter, fight. Are they dogs, or are they large gerbils? Complaining about how plausible a children's movie is generally a pointless venture — the best kids' films include major flights of fancy — but parents should go into Hotel for Dogs prepared to defend their rights to not bring home each and every dog at the shelter. Real dogs are nothing like these dogs.

The movie is an adaptation of Lois Duncan's 1971 young adult novel of the same name. The character of Andi has been aged enough to cast the teen queen Emma Roberts in the role. Roberts gives the impression of poise earned by experience, rather than a natural gift, but by Hollywood standards, she is royalty — Julia Roberts is her aunt — and director Thor Freudenthal seems to have shot her accordingly, bathed in golden light. The family-in-peril angle is also a change from Duncan's story. While Andi and Bruce's kindly Social Services caseworker Bernie (Don Cheadle, who could phone this in but doesn't) would like to keep the siblings together, they live in fear of being sent to separate foster homes. The parallel between the human strays and their canine counterparts is obvious, but sweet.

So is Hotel for Dogs worthy of Malia and Sasha's time? The adults are cartoons, the production values basic at best, and the ending is mindlessly sentimental, but overall, it's an amiable experience. There are so few good theatrical releases for children that for many parents, that will suffice. The great films, the ones that challenge and entertain, like Wall-E, are rare. More often children are offered fare like The Tale of Despereaux, which had parents up in arms over how scary it was for a G-rated film, or Bolt, which was cute but began with a noisy action sequence, loaded with adult-oriented car chases and explosions. (Yes, it was a parody, but that's lost on most preschoolers.) Stacked up against them, Hotel for Dogs seems decidedly tame. And if you've already promised your kids a shelter dog, as the Obamas have, there's nothing to fear. Except Puppy No. 2 and No. 3.

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