The Retrievers

Cute dogs but TERRIBLE movie!
As a dog lover, I feel really bad being critical of a family oriented movie that is about dogs.... but unfortunately, this movie is really terrible. I give it one star for the cute dogs, and that's it. The dogs aren't really even IN the movie that much... they don't actually DO anything. I guess I could have tolerated that, if the rest of the movie were worth watching. Sadly, it isn't... even worse, there are so many poor examples set in the movie that I didn't really even like having my kids watch it! First of all, the kids are terribly bratty. They find a dog, decide to keep her, then find out she is expecting puppies. She has the puppies, and when the time comes to find homes for them, the kids are upset that they have to get rid of them (understandably, of course.... but MOST people do NOT keep an entire litter of puppies just because the kids don't want to part with them....LOL). So, various people come to look at and pick a puppy. The kids treat them terribly, acting...

Certainly not what I expected
The local christian book store had this on sale for $5...how could I go wrong? Well, my son didn't even want to watch the whole thing. Although the pups are cute, it is very slow moving. He loves animals, but shows no interest in finding out what happens in the end. The sibling rivalry, name calling, greedy attitudes and sexually charged scenes are not recommended for a family movie at my house. We'll stick to our Space Buddies movie!

GIVE THE DOG A BONE
It's hard to diss a movie made for Animal Planet about a loving dog and its adorable puppies. Suffice to say, THE RETRIEVERS is a movie that even kids might find hard to sit through. Although the dogs are beautiful and the pups cute, they don't DO anything. The movie instead focuses on the humans and they aren't the most engaging of people either. Robert Hays (Airplane, Angie) plays an ad exec who tiring of the rat's race in NYC moves to a little community where he is immediately plunged back into the rat race courtesy of a billionaire client (played somnambulently by Robert Wagner). His adoring wife (Mel Harris, whatever happened to thirtysomething?) meanwhile monitors the precocious and whining children who take in a female golden retriever who happens to have six puppies. Daddy Hays decides they can't keep the pups so they are reluctantly given new homes to such people as Betty White and Leon Russom. The rest of the movie has the kids and parents trying to get the pups back...

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