A Doggone Hollywood (2017)

 

General summary: A telepathic dog befriends a suspiciously familiar group of children while evading pursuers. Hilarity does not ensue.

 

Which Idea is Top Dog: Christmas Vs Hollywood?

Upon viewing A Doggone Christmas, I thought I had found something unexpected. Though the movie was only tangentially Christmas related, it allowed me to laugh with a silly B movie rather than at it. In this enchanted state I chose to watch another movie from Jim Wynorski’s filmography, A Doggone Hollywood. Only moments into this movie, I realized that any goodwill I felt from the first movie had  quickly been squandered.

What are you?

Before describing the film in any detail though, there is one big question to address, “Is this movie a sequel?” The answer is: not really, but that isn’t for lack of trying. Most of the cast from the first movie is reused, including those darling children who can’t act; the location and several sets from A Doggone Christmas are reused (as are many of the jokes); and the same basic plotline is repurposed. A Doggone Hollywood feels less like an original movie and more like an attempt at recycling everything from the first movie.

A film within a film

The opening shots start with a TV show, “Doggie 911,” focusing on the Jack Russell Terrier ‘Murphy’ who acts as some kind of forest ranger with his human partner, a perpetually angry man played by the head of the FBI from A Doggone Christmas aka the first film. The episode being filmed revolves around a family camping in the area who had their brake lines cut by a vicious stump and are dangerously close to a large hill that would be very dangerous to drive on without brakes. Oh no!

At least she was getting a paycheck

None of this very dramatic scene matters except that the mother in this family is played by B-movie action star Cynthia Rothrock and I was genuinely excited to see that they had gotten her to appear. I was hoping we’d see her do some cool action thing or maybe they would reference some of her old movies. Nope! She says three or four lines in two scenes and then completely disappears from the movie. I guess she was too busy appearing in Cool Cat movies to stick around here.

Anyway, we are quickly acquainted with a bunch of vaguely evil “Hollywood” types who don’t care about whether their prize dog, Murphy, is happy. They only care about using him to make money. Capitalism, am I right? This seems like some kind of bizarre meta commentary given that the director of the film, Jim Wynorski, has the same initials as the fictional TV show director. Maybe this is Wynorski admitting some disturbing facts about his career, but it was probably meant more as a gag.

To the actual plot!

Back to the story: these Hollywood shills share some hilariously bad dialogue and they all seem angry and resentful towards Murphy, even though he makes them a ton of money and is just a dog.

While these corporate monsters exploit this dog for profit (in a manner totally differently than what the real owners of the dog are doing) we meet a small group of children who are hanging around the edge of the filming site. It soon is revealed that they are hoping to catch a glimpse of Murphy so that they can get a photo of him for the lead child’s brother, who is unwell. At this point, Murphy is inside of his limo (what a diva!) and there is no way for the children to get close enough for a picture, so they devise a cunning plan.

Leaping into action

This plan involves the sick and homebound child using his expert hacking skills to hack into a police drone that is in the area (for reasons?), and then using that drone to break into the wifi of the limo. The goal is to open the limo door and let Murphy leave the limo and they can snap a picture of him.

These kids look somewhere around 8-12 years old tops and they are somehow expert hackers, a plot point that never comes up again in the film.

This complicated and super illegal/immoral/unethical plan goes off without a hitch and Murphy runs free from the confines of his limo. This then leads the entire film crew on a wild dog chase around the set, including several scenes where a large group of able bodied adults pretend that they can’t catch a slow moving dog. Hijinks ensue and Murphy makes his escape whereupon it is revealed that….. the entire plot of A Doggone Christmas is going to be reused for A Doggone Hollywood.

Well, it worked the first time

Surprise! Murphy is telepathic in this movie, too, and declares to the audience, “I’M BACK BABY.” Suddenly, the story is about a telepathic dog evading his pursuers and hiding with a group of children who can’t keep the dog because their family is poor. Awww…

This is the exact moment when I completely turned on this movie.

The earlier scenes were dumb in a way that was mildly charming, but the realization that this movie is a barely concealed copy of the previous movie, revealed the cynical core of a blatant cash grab.

Considering that the cast is the same and I could tell that they had reused many of the sets, I wouldn’t put it past this crew to have just filmed both movies at once and then released them as two separate films.

Back to the money grab, I mean movie:

The children make their way back home and meet Murphy, who instantly loves these children because he is a dog and dogs love children. It checks out.

They stop by a local, abandoned zip line but decide not to go down it as they, pretty reasonably, question how safe it would be to do so (the fact that the zipline looks completely new and perfectly maintained is totally irrelevant).

While that is happening, we cut to a scene where the people who were supposed to be guarding the dog are checking local animal shelters to see if Murphy was brought there. With zero evidence (but the cold, hard conviction of truth), they immediately surmise that the children must have hacked the limo. Their reasoning being that all children are hacking experts and could have pulled this off. That is actually what they say.

Young Hacking Experts of the World Unite

So the lead girl gets home and meets up with her brother who is in a wheelchair, which they explain by occasionally mentioning an “accident”. They watch a little TV and then Murphy emerges and converses with them telepathically.  He tells them of his hatred for show business and his desire to live with a loving family instead. The kids sympathize with Murphy’s plight (they too want to find a loving, yet rich home) and try to make him feel welcome while they figure out a way to keep Murphy around forever.

After a brief cutaway in which nothing new is learned and nothing important happens, we return to the house and see one of the strangest scenes I have ever witnessed in a kids movie. The girl breaks into a monologue, explaining that doctors have said that the brother CAN move his legs but he just won’t. WTF?

Disclaimer: I am not a medical expert so I won’t even comment on that aspect of this but, I will just point out how strange it is to have this as a subplot in a movie about a telepathic dog who has escaped a life of show business and is being pursued by a bunch of wacky adults. Also, this is incredibly obvious foreshadowing for the end of the film.

So we meet back up with the kids as they are going to school and Murphy reveals his telepathic abilities to the entire group. In a manner very similar to the first film, they ask him how he received these awesome powers of telepathy and Murphy responds by saying he was walking in a field during a rainstorm and was struck by a bolt of lightning.

This backstory is accompanied by scenes from a cartoon short that was featured in A Doggone Christmas. The short depicts a dog sitting in a field and being hit by a bolt of lightning and in this movie has been repackaged as an explanation for how Murphy came to have powers. Spoiler: Murphy has an alternative backstory in the first film.

Waterboarding children

The self plagiarism continues as the bumbling pursuers figure out that the kids must go to school (what a novel idea) and stop by the local school to ask the principal if they can…..search the school and interrogate children? Their plan isn’t very clear here and it is obvious that this scene was only written so that the guy who does the Dirty Harry impression can be in the movie again. He does his Dirty Harry impression. It’s an okay impression. Then Principal Callahan throws them out of the school because of course he would and the scene just stops.

At this point Murphy is waiting for the kids to leave school (everyone knows where to find America’s children, apparently). So he goes looking for a bone that he buried near a lake and runs into an old man playing checkers by himself on a bench. Murphy runs up and speaks to the old man, who shows no reaction to the bizarre nature of the scene, apparently, writing off the encounter as himself being old, senile and close to death. He and Murphy then play checkers. Bizarre

One move forward, Two back

Murphy makes one move, with the camera cutting to show his paw move the piece (of course), and then the old gentleman congratulates Murphy on a very smart move. The only problem is that it is clearly visible in the next scene that the piece that Murphy “moved” is back in its original position. I can’t say I’m shocked that a movie like this would miss details like that and have continuity issues. They play a few more games of checkers and then we rejoin our child heroes.

Back at school the child kidnappers are having really awful dialogue about how these kids today are always texting and no one talks to each other anymore and standard generational complaints. The weird thing about this is that we see the children sitting on a park bench talking and they are green-screened in front of the school. No one in any of those shots is visibly on a cell phone.

The pursuers pursue the children as they are walking home in a scene that is not even slightly weird or creepy.  The kids run through the woods to the conveniently placed old abandoned yet perfectly maintained zip line and decide that the best course of action is to use it to escape these creepy, creepy adults. Conveniently, the old abandoned zipline is still in perfect working order (with brand new helmets too, how convenient!) and the children make their way down it easily and safely. This doesn’t stop our wacky agents as they follow the kids down the zipline only to be subjected to physical comedy involving baked goods (classic!) and wasps (Ouch). They are still being followed so once all the children are off the zipline the lead girl unzips the line, causing the zipline to go slack and dumping our pursuers the lake. No one really acknowledges how easily this girl’s actions could have horribly maimed or killed someone and they all go home for dinner!

This gem isn’t over yet

The movie slows down for a bit here as the children make it back home and we learn that the young wheelchair-bound boy lost his father in a car accident that also caused his legs to become injured. It is a tragic sequence and very tonally similar to the last scene in which two grown men almost die after being dropped off a zipline by our precocious youngsters.

So right after this happens the two kids approach their mom about keeping Murphy because his old owners are a bunch of money-grubbing corporate shills. Their mother doesn’t see things this way and contacts the owners of the dog to arrange a pick up. She maintains that this is because the dog belongs to someone else and I’m sure the fifty thousand dollar reward for the dog had nothing to do with her decision.

Miracles do happen

Murphy owners show up and all hope seems lost, until suddenly, the boy child makes a daring getaway on his rocket powered wheelchair, that can go faster than the cars which are pursuing him. A brutally long chase sequence occurs in which this kid is trying to outrun? outwheel? outrocket? everyone who is following him and then tragedy strikes. His wheelchair hits a snag and crashes, sending him to the ground and launching an unconscious Murphy onto the train tracks. No one is around to help and the train is making its way towards poor, prone Murphy.

Someone remarks, “Oh no, that is the 4PM train and it’s never late!” But it is unclear as to why they are concerned because they don’t know Murphy is on the tracks yet. In the face of this adversity, and because he loves Murphy so so very much, the boy musters the ability to walk and saves Murphy from the oncoming train mere moments before they are struck. Everyone sees this and it is declared a miracle (A Doggone Miracle, specifically) and the kids get to keep the dog because….the power of walking is greater than corporate greed?

The film ends with Murphy back on the show but he is now owned by the kids who take good care of him and play with him and love how much money he is making them (as opposed to tolerating how much money he brings in) and whatnot.

In conclusion

The entire movie is so cynically presented and written that it is impossible to feel anything for anyone in this movie, except maybe contempt. My anger towards this “sequel” has more than overtaken my mild amusement at the first movie. Now that this series is finally finished I have nothing to do but sit here and relax until……oh no……..A Doggone Adventure just came out.