Beverly Hills Chihuahua: Critic Reviews

You could say Beverly Hills Chihuahua is Lady and the Tramp meets Viva Zapata!, but seriously, I've seen zestier attitude in a Purina commercial.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua approaches but never quite achieves a truly spectacular level of absurdity.

This piece of egregious silliness from Disney - featuring live-action canines with CGI moving mouths - isn't quite as awful as it sounds.

Ticket buyers older than 8 should simply close their eyes and ponder a more stimulating concept: Beverly Hills Cujo.

As depressing as it is to find so many gifted artists reduced to making a talking-dog picture, Beverly Hills Chihuahua turns out to be genuinely sweet.

For most of Beverly Hills Chihuahua, all I could think about was Drew Barrymore. What might she have been up to while she recited her lines for Chloe, the spoiled yet sad-looking live-action Chihuahua that speaks in her voice.

Sublimely silly and oddly poignant, Beverly Hills Chihuahua -- that's right, the one with the talking canines -- is Lady and the Tramp for lap dogs, Roots for pooches, Legally Blonde told from Bruiser's point of view.

The good news: Beverly Hills Chihuahua is not the apocalypse-signaling, cultural abomination its trailers make it out to be. The bad news: That's pretty much the best thing that can be said about it.

Sure, it's essentially Legally Blonde told from a dog's perspective, down to Chloe's newfound self-awareness, but darned if it isn't awfully cute.

The film is Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The audience is the fire hydrant.

If Chihuahua is no Babe or Charlotte's Web, at least it's in the Alvin and the Chipmunks ballpark. Just remember nobody went to the pet store and grabbed a chipmunk on the way home after that one.

Aside from some obvious racial stereotypes and voices that occasionally stray into Frito Bandito territory, Chihuahua has charm to spare for the adults, while offering plenty to keep young pups enthralled.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua is hardly Best in Show when it comes to Disney dog movies.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua isn't terrible. OK, it's kind of terrible, but it's a talking-dog movie, and anyone who goes to a talking-dog movie without being prepared to step in poop deserves to ruin his shoes.

The story's a bit dog-eared, but the voice cast adds plenty of energetic bite.

Despite its superficial lip-service to self-actualization/realization, there has to be more to life than what Beverly Hills Chihuahua is putting out there, which is fit for neither man nor beast.

...ultimately about as enthralling as a low-rent Saturday morning cartoon.

Gosnell gracelessly walks us through cheap, generic talking dog material, while parents everywhere groan silently to themselves.

An appealing film for dog lovers and those seeking escapist entertainment.

In a triumph of animal wrangling and CGI tinkering, the canine cast turn in better performances than some of the humans.

Silly beyond reason, it somehow manages to win us over despite our doubts, and by the end we're ashamed that we can't stop giggling.

It's put across with enough brio to excuse the inherent stupidity of the premise.

This live-action Disney comedy is the kind of family film which is aimed not so much at parents, as small children and their goldfish, as long as the goldfish do not have too long an attention span.