Hotel for Dogs: Critic Reviews

Marking its territory in the mind-boggling 
middle ground between Schindler's List and Beverly Hills Chihuahua, the cartoonish kid pic Hotel for Dogs turns out to be a weirdly oblivious Holocaust parable.

Loaded with enough stupid pet and human tricks to satisfy David Letterman for years to come.

The schmaltz is laid on thick, but kids love this sort of stuff and, refreshingly, the dog bits are done the old-fashioned, fun way: with animal trainers rather than CGI.

The human dramas are less involving [than the dogs'], and a pair of teen romances feel like something on the Disney Channel.

Friendly, formulaic, completely harmless.

The crisp look director Thor Freudenthal brings to the visuals isn't matched in its story or its characters, all of whom, including the dogs, lack a special zip.

It's sad to see a promising fantasy turn into yet another industrial-scale fantasy-delivery system that beats up on its audience with mindless intensity and undercuts its own humanity.

Hotel for Dogs is a sweet, innocent family movie about stray dogs that seem as well-trained as Olympic champions.

The dogs include a fine three-legged fellow who reminded me of my in-law's old dog, Buddy, and that's the sort of movie we have here. You use it to think about dogs you once knew, or the ones whose company you're enjoying at present.

By movie's end, I had whiplash from the movie's lurches between frivolity and seriousness.

You'd probably be just as entertained chasing your own tail.

Although younger children will doubtless love it, Hotel for Dogs is too often cute for its own sake to really entertain anyone else.

A chihuahua-sized concept served up in a doggy bag of contrivances and shtick.

A laughless, gadget-geared and poop-obsessed kid comedy based on a Lois Duncan book, it will sorely test any parent hoping to have a few laughs with the kids and make it home without a side trip to the Humane Society.

Plot and character development are pretty much irrelevant in the sunshiny fantasy world of this movie.

It's like flipping through five years of dog calendars.

The dogs in Hotel For Dogs perform breathtaking stunts, touching love scenes, heart-breaking soliloquies with their eyes and clever, clever tricks. The human actors get upstaged at every turn.

A clever concept that quickly runs out of room to roam.

All in all it's a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon with a bunch of kids.

Undemanding tykes will gets their giggles flowing with the Rube Goldberg-style contraptions invented for the dogs.

...unapologetically geared towards younger viewers...

All that matters is that the loose ends of this sweet, kids-outsmart-the-adults fable are ultimately tied together nicely in a fashion certain to satisfy the average five year-old by the time the closing credits roll.

Not bad. It is funny and touching at times, even though the premise is pretty close to impossible.

You'll admire the doggie tricks and tolerate the rest, which is both the best and worst thing that can be said about it.