Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Last night I had the pleasure of watching a modern cinematic classic called Beverly Hills Chihuahua with my friend Reginald C. Hopscotch, his girlfriend Lily Tillamook and her friend Isabella Plunk.

The Plot: Jamie Lee Curtis has a Chihuahua and spoils it with diamonds and designer dog couture. Curtis goes on a whirlwind press junket, presumably to dispel widespread rumor that she is, in fact, a hermaphrodite, and leaves Chloe with Piper Perabo, Curtis’ feckless niece. On a whim, Perabo takes the dog down to Mexico with her gurls, presumably to bed some sleazy OC lacrosse player…or maybe just to see a donkey show. We never really find out why the human characters do anything. They just go. I digress. Naturally, with Piper out dancing with her entourage of aimless gits, Chloe (who, by the way, is voiced with Drew Barrymore’s dizzying dopey shrill) is dog-napped by a dog fighting ring. She barely escapes with the scent-impaired, former police Alsatian and the cliche and cliche and cliche and cliche until the end where they are reunited with Perabo and more cliches occur.

The Good: There is a scene, toward the end, when Chloe learns to bark (“finds her voice”). There’s just nothing quite as adorable as a Chihuahua barking.

The Bad: There’s nothing about this movie that is good. The filmmakers throw in adult humor like the references to much more adult movies like Apocalypse Now and Scarface, as if we will knowingly snicker and think “Hey, this stuff isn’t so bad.” But it is bad because it’s not impossible to make a film that appeals on the same level to both adults and kids. Take Finding Nemo as a prime example of something that is conceptually entertaining to adults and kids. BHC eschews this in favor of idiotic in-jokes and a dumbed-down, hackneyed plot. This is not its greatest sin, though. In the middle of it, I asked myself whether the filmmakers are making fun of the spoiled Hollywood elite or fawning dog owners or Mexicans and I realized who the unwitting butt of the joke was: me. The filmmakers aren’t just making fun of my intelligence by making such inane rubbish; they’re insulting kids, too. Kids are much too smart to fall for talking animals. Yeah, I should think it’s stupid because I don’t fit the targeted demographic, but at what point do we start taking children a little more seriously? I think we take for granted how vivid and impressive a child’s imagination is when we continually allow movies like this to be made. And the onus is on us to make it stop because we are the one’s who pay for the tickets. The fewer tickets something like this sells, the fewer movies of its ilk will be made.


I know the future isn't dependent on the nature or quality of children's cinema, but maybe we'll live in a better future if we stop pandering to adults and patronizing kids. Just a thought.