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When Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua came out in the theaters a few months ago I wasn’t very excited to see it, but my 10-year-old daughter loves dogs and nearly fainted with ecstasy when she saw the trailers—so off we went.
The movie was a bit different from what I was expecting from the trailers, which amused me with their “Dog Revolution” themes. Instead the story is about a pampered Beverly Hill’s Chihuahua, Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) whose owner, Aunt Viv (Jamie Lee Curtis) has to go away on business and leaves her prized pet in the care of her irresponsible niece, Rachel (Piper Perabo). Rachel’s friends soon coerce her into a road trip down to Mexico and in the process of it all, Chloe ends up getting lost south of the border.
What follows is a frequently funny mismatched buddy movie as she teams up with the reluctant Delgado (voiced by Andy Garcia), who is a washed-up police dog without a home. Meanwhile, Papi (voiced by George Lopez), a hunky Chihuahua who belongs to Aunt Viv’s gardener and is madly in love with Chloe accompanies his owner to Mexico in an effort to rescue his love.
. I was just as entertained by the dogs and cat in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
even though we never saw their mouths move once. It was the writing and the editing that made that movie as touching as it was and it’s also what makes Beverly Hills Chihuahua so endearing. It would be just as good without the animated speech of the animals.
With all of the unmanliness of watching a movie about tiny, fancy, talking dogs aside, I found this movie very entertaining. In many ways it reminded me of the wholesome movies that Disney made years back, like The Shaggy Dog
I’d recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys comedies about animals. It’s nowhere near as annoying as the movie from a few years ago, Cats & Dogs
and Blu-ray
and is also available for download on iTunes