The Good

A family friendly film that should bring smiles to the faces of all who watch it.

The Bad

This film was a little too cute for me.Andi (Emma Roberts) and Bruce (Jake T. Austin) are foster kids who are placed with parents who really don't have time for them. Without their parents knowing it, they have adopted a dog called Friday. When they can't find Friday they start searching around town and end up finding a desolate hotel filled with dogs. Feeling like strays themselves, Andi and Bruce start to take care of these dogs and suddenly it seems like they have something of a family unit. Things get upended when the city finds out about this and it seems like Andi and Emma might be separated from the dogs -- and each other.

All in all Hotel For Dogs is pretty much what viewers expect it will be. That said, this movie does everything it can to rise above being a simple "family film."

Features

Commentary Track

Thor Freudenthal and other members of the cast are the ones who did the audio track here. I found this to be riveting. I mean who doesn't want to hear production anecdotes about the making of Hotel For Dogs? This was a real passion project that burned in the bosom of all who were a part of it. Okay... this commentary features the director talking about the making of this film and that is about it.

Featurettes

Deleted Scenes

Buyers get about 10 minutes of deleted scenes here. Truthfully, and this isn't a slam on this movie, I don't know that people are gonna really care about these things. It's not like Hotel For Dogs is one of those movies that left many questions unanswered. These scenes simply show more things that were in the movie, but probably made the film's eventual 100 minute run time feel overly long.

Video

2.35:1 - Widescreen. This film looked decent. It was shot in the classic brightly lit way that movies like this need to be shot. There wasn't anything too incredible about the visuals of this film, although I am sure that technical film people will probably find aspects of this movie's look to be "pretty." Decide for yourself, there are certainly worse looking things to put in your DVD player.

Audio

Dolby Digital - Subtitled in English, French and Spanish. The audio on this film pretty much followed the look of the this movie. The audio is there, it serves its purpose but it doesn't really do anything else besides that.

Package

Emma Roberts and Jake T. Astin are showcased on this front cover that features a bevy of canines from the film. The back portion of the cover features more shots from the film, a description, Special Features and technical specs. There is nothing too amazing about this packaging job but, as I have stated, it gets the job done.

Final Word

To say that I liked Hotel For Dogs wouldn't necessarily be true. If I didn't have friends who had small children, I most likely would not have requested to review this title. I say that because I often review DVDs like this so that I can give them to my friends kids afterwards. So I basically fell on the sword, watched this movie, went through the extras and now I am writing the review.

As I said above this isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. Hotel For Dogs is quick, clever and fun and it should make the people watching it (probably under the age of 10) happy.

Hotel for Dogs was released January 16, 2009.