A Blu-ray Review: HOTEL FOR DOGS (DreamWorks/Nickelodeon)

Mike LoManaco

Studio Name: DreamWorks Home Entertainment/Nickelodeon Movies
Disc Release Region Information: Region 1 (U.S.)
MPAA Rating: PG
Disc Information: 1080p High Definition
Video Codec: N/A
Tested Audio Track: English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD
Director: Thor Freudenthal
Starring Cast: Kevin Dillon, Lisa Kudrow, Don Cheadle

SYNOPSIS & ANALYSIS:

Let's get this out of the way right now: If, like me, you were all choked up and upset, depressed and downright teary-eyed over the end of Marley and Me, this uplifting "makeup" will make you feel better almost instantly. What's most refreshing about Hotel for Dogs is that it ends on a positive, pro-dog note along the lines of the seminal classic, K-9. I saw this theatrically, as we are diehard canine lovers, and immediately knew it was going to be a buy upon home video release. Indeed, the title was released today, and Best Buy had it on sale for about $28 with tax -- not bad.

While really targeting a younger demographic via Nickelodeon's motion picture studio, Hotel for Dogs is truly a heartwarming tale (or is it tail?) that any aged viewer can enjoy. The film centers around two foster kids, Andi and Bruce (Emma Roberts and Jake T. Austin) who are "guided" by their child protective services counselor (Don Cheadle). While most anything released in Hollywood today headlined by teen or tween-aged "actors" pretending to have anything remotely interesting to portray or communicate makes me head for the bathroom faster than Casey Anthony drops her panties, this was different -- the kids in this film are really genuine in their passions for helping stray animals and they don't actually give you a headache as you watch them try to save these dogs' lives, and their own.

And so Andi and Bruce live with two idiotic rock musician wanna-be losers as their current foster "family" (played ridiculously accurate by Kevin Dillon and Lisa Kudrow, although Kudrow seemed like a very odd selection for this role) while at the same time attempting to feed and shelter a little white dog they have named "Friday." As they try and hide Friday from Kudrow and Dillon as he jumps in and out of their room in the couple's apartment, Friday gets into mischief on the streets of the faux "city" exhibited in the film, including eating hot dogs out of people's hands and cleaning off a plate of bacon prepared by Kudrow in the apartment's kitchen. The stunt work and custom training done for the dogs in this film are almost beyond reproach and are fascinating to watch; Friday even rides on a custom-made "elevator" created from a milk carton and string that rises and falls from the apartment to the street below so he can come and go as he pleases.

Living with Dillon and Kudrow is intolerable for the kids, and their CPS agent, Cheadle, is attempting to find them a new home. Meanwhile, Friday has stumbled upon an abandoned building in the city that was once a swanky hotel, and finds other canine residents living there. As the kids hide out in the hotel with the dogs, attempting to escape their life with Kudrow and Dillon, Andi catches the attention of a boy working in the local pet store, who offers her more strays to take in. As the kid and another worker from the store are exposed to the abandoned building housing these strays, they agree to help Andi and Bruce round up more stray dogs that need homes and bring them to the building.

What follows is hilarious and downright smile-inducing sequences of how these kids build an all-new home for these canines, replete with a total overhaul of the interior of the building, cleanup and creation of ingenious feeding and bathroom-habit concoctions for all the pooches. It's really interesting to watch as the dogs get exercise, urinate on a gigantic golden fire hydrant that washes itself, take dumps on toilets made specifically for them as the waste is dropped into self-removing bag systems and even find time for recreation with a "simulator ride" the kids create that allow the dogs to believe they're in a speeding car so the wind can hit their faces.

How do they afford all this, you ask? Well, Andi and Bruce have been stealing food from Kudrow and Dillon's apartment to feed the dogs, but eventually the kid from the pet store that likes Andi aids in the delivery of big bags of Eukanuba and such. When the foster parents find out the kids have been stealing from them -- including guitar parts and other things from the apartment to power their dog hotel devices -- they report the kids to Cheadle and the cops. The scene where Kudrow and Dillon are thrown into the "**** room" in the hotel is hysterical. However, things get a bit hard on the heartstrings I'm afraid here in that Andi and Bruce are separated from each other because of the illegal housing of the strays in the abandoned building; they are arrested, sent back to the CPS officer and the dogs are "evicted" from their hotel home and thrown back in the city pound. This part of the film gets a bit sad, but the tone becomes upbeat, as is the flow of this film and what makes it so appealing, when Friday escapes from the pound on his own and makes his way back to finding both Andi and Bruce in their seaparate foster institutions. He even reunites Andi with her love interest from the pet store, and then the three concoct a plan to break all the captured dogs out of their cages at the pound -- the message here is powerful in that the kids, while knowing what they are doing can get them in even deeper trouble, are only interested in saving the lives of these stray dogs and making sure they have a real home to return to. The "breakout" plan involves returning to the pound, distracting one of the guys to come outside so the kids can slip in, and then locking out all the other catchers of the pound so they could go in and open the cages, allowing the dogs to escape. Then, yet another smile-inducing scene begins where these dozens upon dozens of dogs are running through the streets of the city, following the pet store's delivery truck and lead by Friday himself, but while the kids want the dogs to stay away from the hotel for now, that's exactly where Friday leads them all. As the cops, animal control and a swarm of media and residents descend upon the front entrance of the hotel to see what is going on, the CPS agent is already there -- and as the dogs are being threatened to be taken away by animal control once again, he calls out the names of each dog on the "register list" that the kids made, documenting all of them as they were found and rescued in the hotel. Each dog comes to the steps of the "front lobby" of this old hotel as he calls their names, and the scene is very touching -- the CPS agent basically saves their lives and asks that the dogs not be taken away again.

I don't want to give away too much more about Hotel for Dogs but the final sequence is also rather touching, in which because the community is so rocked by the determination of these kids to rescue stray canines, the building is re-opened and remodeled as a true "Hotel for Dogs" where pooches are pampered and treated like real human guests at a resort. In an even more hysterical sequence, the "adult" dogs are treated to a special lounge act headlined by Kudrow and Dillon themselves who, after their dreams of becoming huge rock stars don't seem to go anywhere, are stuck playing songs like "Ruff, Ruff, Ruff" in a candle-lit room for pooches as they unwind and howl at the stage. It was very clever. There is much more to this ending, so don't worry -- just know that it's really a big, refreshing change from so many depressing endings of films involving animals. Andi and Bruce even end up with a new adoptive family, bringing an even more upbeat feel to the film, and that one I won't give away (in terms of who the family is).

REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW...

Mike LoManaco

VIDEO QUALITY:

If memory serves, this was my first experience with a DreamWorks Blu-ray title; I have a plethora of DVD titles from this studio in my collection and most have been outstanding performers with DTS audio tracks and such. The case for Hotel for Dogs didn't provide any information on codec, ratio or presentation -- the transfer filled my screen with no letterboxing, so this must be somewhere around the 1.85:1 size or so.

This one was a tough call...while you may think a title such as this, in conjunction with a "youth-oriented" Nickelodeon subdivision, would be eye-popping and almost animated in nature, it had its moments of negative qualities. Well, let's start at the beginning: The opening of the film exhibited great depth and clarity, showing wet city streets with tremendous detail in the cement...as Friday walks down the street looking for something to eat from someone, his white fur against the city streets looked impressive. The city shots themselves are the best on this transfer, with some images of the skyscrapers looking almost "LCD-like" on my rear projection set; fleshtones seemed accurate, but many of them also looked a bit flat as if they were missing some sharpness or detail.

There were some problems with noise; some sequences dropped into a fuzzy, soft mess for a few seconds, then popped back again, and then dropped into the softness and "buzz" again. This may have been photography issues during shooting. The biggest issues came with the interior shots of the hotel when it got dingy and dark; grain and noise showed up in these clips but depending on your source player, setup, calibration levels of your display, etc. etc., you may experience a much different image. There was also too much of a yellow push to interior images in certain shots -- lamps glowing on walls inside the hotel for example were almost saturated in an excessive gold/yellowish glow; this has happened on many titles in my collection, so it is possible that this may have something to do with the picture mode I'm running on my display and the overall color level I achieved after calibration (even though the color needed to be turned down initially to curb this "yellow push" and that did help from the original default color setting on my Sony which seemed to be ideal for a period of time).

My fianc

McLoki

Mike - I am really enjoying reading your last couple of reviews of blu-ray disks. They are very well done and really gives us a good idea of if the disk is worth the additionhal cost of Blu-Ray over SD.


Thanks for posting and Welcome to Club Polk.

Michael

Mike LoManaco

McLoki wrote: »

Mike - I am really enjoying reading your last couple of reviews of blu-ray disks. They are very well done and really gives us a good idea of if the disk is worth the additionhal cost of Blu-Ray over SD.


Thanks for posting and Welcome to Club Polk.

Michael

Thanks so much, Loki!

I appreciate the comments; I write for publications on a freelance basis and for other sites (under different aliases for privacy purposes) and have done DVD reviews for years...I'm now beginning to focus my attention on Blu-ray.

Thank you again for reading and I hope I can continue to give you guys good ideas of whether or not the titles are worth upgrading or choosing over SD DVD.

And thank you for your welcome greetings!!

Toolfan66

Agreed!!! Thanks for the reveiws.

Mike LoManaco

TOOLFORLIFEFAN wrote: »

Agreed!!! Thanks for the reveiws.

Thank you for reading!