Pudsey the Dog: The Movie (2014)

Director: Nick Moore

Viewed on Amazon Prime

 

Summary: A dog meets a family who move to a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere. Shockingly that isn’t the setup for a horror movie. The dog dances.

 

Today we’re going to be looking at our latest cinematic tour de force Pudsey The Dog: The Movie! Now, you probably have a few questions like 1) Who the hell is Pudsey? And 2) Why should I care? I can answer at least one of those questions right now. Pudsey The Dog is the World Famous UK Famous winner of hit reality show Britain’s Got Talent and consequently he was given his first movie role as a result of this victory. Interestingly, Pudsey won the show with his human owner, Ashleigh, who does not appear in this film. Wow Pudsey, way to instantly abandon your dance partner as soon as you get your breakout role, so much for man’s best friend. So, if this story isn’t about Pudsey and Ashleigh winning the show, then what is this story about? Strap in folks, because this one is going to be both odd and British.

But before we begin, let me show you what this movie is all about, Pudsey!

The movie begins with Pudsey working on a film set, where a black and white film about something not important is being filmed while Pudsey sits motionless on a small couch, whereupon he immediately decides that it is time to, “liven things up” by dancing around on his back paws. Pudsey’s dance, though adorable, is not part of the director’s vision for this scene and he begins angrily shouting about how Pudsey is ruining this movie. Pretty understandable. So Pudsey returns to his owner, right? No! He just runs off set and as the black and white coloration of the scene morphs into an all color tableau we are met with the greatest theme song any dog has ever had, He’s Got The Love! And of course we have a wonderful nonsensical montage with our opening credits over it! I have to say, I’ve seen so many of these dog movies that have montages with their credits over them that I get confused when I see movies that don’t start this way.

 

After this needless fun montage Pudsey finds himself in a park, admiring the handsome scene of a delightful nuclear family playing with their dog. Pudsey pauses briefly, overtaken by sadness at his lack of a family and…wait a minute, Pudsey was just working on a movie set. HOW does he not have an owner? I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain this but animals who act in movies tend to have owners, so who owned Pudsey? Are they looking for him? Did Pudsey not like them? If he didn’t have an owner was he just representing himself to the film studio? Did he negotiate his own contract? All these questions are unanswered while Pudsey stares longingly at this family, yearning for the domestic bliss that they feel. Pudsey then instantly loses interest and jumps on a bus, because he’s never been on one of those!

 

Once on the bus Pudsey witnesses a horrific sight. There are some bullies! Bullying some children! It is a terrible sight, made worse by the brutal atomic wedgie that the lead bully gives to one of the kids.

That’s the face of a man with nothing to lose.

 

This attack is so brutal that even Pudsey is shocked and disgusted. Not caring that the bully is about ten times his size Pudsey leaps into action and tackles the bully, knocking him down. This bully then…gets up and calmly walks away, not saying or doing anything else. I guess he had an appointment and he had used up all of his allotted bullying time. He may be a bully, but he can’t be late, he is British after all. The children immediately love Pudsey and bring him home with them to meet their mother, who will not allow her children to keep this dog because the house that they are moving to doesn’t allow dogs! Before sending Pudsey on his way, one of the kids says they should feed him and opens the fridge, revealing it to be completely empty except for a giant plate of sausages.

The traditional British sausage fridge.

 

This fridge is one of many surreal images that we are going to see in this film.  The family leaves Pudsey behind…that is until Pudsey stows away in their luggage! Good one Pudsey. The family drives out in to the countryside, because who doesn’t love a good driving montage, and wind up on a backwoods road where the car hits something and gets a flat tire!

 

I think? I am no expert at car repair, but that tire doesn’t look flat. The budget for this movie wasn’t huge, but surely they had enough money to go to a junkyard and grab a broken tire to slap onto this car for one shot! And if you don’t have a flat tire to spare then how about DON’T GIVE US A CLOSE UP SHOT OF THE TIRE. You can just say the tire was flat. I’d have believed you. Immediately after realizing this a friendly (and ruggedly handsome) farmer drives up the road with his tractor and gives the family a ride to their new home! Which is a dilapidated monstrosity. The windows are broken, it is full of garbage, it has broken furniture and to top it all off, the sink tap dispenses water that is full of TADPOLES.

Or minnows? I’m not sure which would be more revolting.

 

Lady, I’m not trying to tell you how to parent, but maybe you shouldn’t let your children live in this no doubt vermin infested hell hole? Oh, you think this house will be fine with some cleaning? Great. The kids will do some cleaning and Pudsey will go and meet the local farm animals! He meets a lovely horse couple and a pig who thinks he is a hen. Hope you enjoy that joke was funny, because the writers thought a hog who thinks it is a chicken is hysterical and they keep reminding us. Also the animals speak to each other, and their mouth movements are nothing short of nightmarish. You need to see this to believe how frightening it is. I’m going to include a link to Pudsey’s theme song, and the music video contains some sequences of these animal mouths so you can see what I’m talking about without watching the movie. After making all these terrifying joyous new friends Pudsey goes to sleep and has some very odd dreams. He dreams that he is running through a field where he sees…

Pudsey really has a thing for sausages. And the surreal imagery continue.

 

So while the kids adjust to their new home, Pudsey makes a disturbing discovery while sneaking around the home of the family’s landlord. Pudsey finds a model village that includes plans to bulldoze the family’s new home and the local farm in order to build a giant mall! There are so many reasons why this plan is awful, so I will just list a few. 1) If he plans to tear down the house then why rent it out? 2) Who is going to GO to this mall that is being built in a place that is explicitly the middle of nowhere and hours from any large towns or cities? 3) Why is this a secret/how could it be a secret? Don’t you need building permits and permission from the local government officials before you could begin construction like this? 4) Here is an unrelated picture of the landlord wearing a mouse costume.

If a man wants to dress as a mouse in his own home, then it is not my business.

 

Also while trying to clean a horse’s hoof the daughter gets kicked full on in the face by said horse and gets her nose shattered.

And worse, her head is getting eaten by some sort of blue alien!

 

While this absolutely thrilling story continues, the landlord decides he has finally had enough of Pudsey and arranges for Pudsey to be taken away, because he knows that Pudsey is the only one who can stop his dastardly plan to….develop his land as he sees fit? The landlord brings in a tall bald guy (because tall bald guys are intimidating and evil, you see) to take Pudsey away because the contract for leasing the house specifies that there be no dogs there. I don’t know why he waited more than 50 minutes into the movie to actually enforce this clause but hey, at least something is happening. So Pudsey is taken to a nightmarish dog processing facility that exists because….I don’t actually know what this place is or why there are dogs there. It never really gets explained to us. All that is established is that this location is full of dogs and is run by the evil bald guy who spies on all the dogs via his hyper advanced watchtower where he spends all his time playing with model train sets.

I can’t believe this is an actual image from a movie starring a dancing dog.

 

Pudsey knows that he has to get back to his family and warn them of this horrible plan to demolish the house and build a mall, so he quickly convinces the other dogs there to help him out  At first they are wary of Pudsey’s plan, but they soon fall in line once Pudsey stars in an impromptu music video.

Everyone loves unexplainable special effects that accompany motivational songs!

 

Once all the dogs are onboard with this plan they spring into action, distracting the train lover with a horde of dancing dogs and then destroying the gate in the pandemonium. They destroy the gate by digging up the stands for the watchtower, crashing it into the gate and tearing it down. This is just the opportunity Pudsey and his new dog friend need as they hightail it back to Pudsey’s home before it gets torn down. Arriving on the outskirts of the village they are met with a frightful sight, a team of construction workers waiting to be given the greenlight to start this project. Quickly scanning the area to see what they can use to their advantage, the two dogs don a clever disguise.

Well, not that clever….

 

The two dogs make it past the construction workers, and just in time too, as the youngest of the family’s children is alone at the house that is soon to be demolished. Shortly everyone becomes aware of the landlord’s imminent plan to raze the family home, so everyone begins racing to get there and stop this demolishing before it can begin in earnest.

 

But the young boy has made it there first! As he bravely stands before the oncoming bulldozers, the construction workers realize something isn’t quite right and stop trying to tear down the house. But then tragedy! One of the workers falls out of the bulldozer and it continues on towards the boy! He refuses to move from the path, because he’s….dumb I guess, and he is saved at the last second by Pudsey’s uncanny ability to jump at people and push them out of the way of things.

 

As the boy is passed out on the ground, because getting shoved by a small dog is very traumatic, the evil landlord has a flashback that explains why he hates dogs so much. As a child his rich parents ignored him and his younger brother in favor of playing with their new puppy.

Forget this guy’s mental issues, this image is giving me my own.

 

A very tragic backstory, that is somewhat muddled by Pudsey somehow projecting himself into this memory and informing the landlord that he just “needs to learn how to speak dog.” Back in reality the landlord is being taken away by paramedics, his mind has been broken by Pudsey and all he can do now is ‘Woof’ at passerby.

No, I’m serious, that is the end of his character arc.

 

And now that everything is fine it is time for a dance party! The way all great movies end. So this was a particularly disjointed summation of Pudsey The Dog: The Movie, but I blame the really terrible script. This movie barely had a plot and I wound up leaving out about 5 different subplots, so most of my writing here focused on Pudsey, which is what the movie should have been focussing on the entire time. Pudsey is actually pretty cute and he was better trained than the dogs in some of these other movies, looking at you Chihuahua: The Movie, which gave him some personality. Even though this movie was really bad I find Pudsey’s weirdness really endearing and I’m looking forward to seeing if he’s been in anything else or if they are making a sequel. Let me just google that real quick and….oh…Pudsey’s dead. Well see you next time!

 

 

 

 

I do not own any of the images in this review. They are used under Fair Use doctrine and are the property of their copyright holders.