WATCHING the gaggle of ignorant mutts in “Hotel for Dogs” sit down at a long formal table and eagerly wait to lap up the dog food served by their masters created an “aha!” moment. It was like watching a Citigroup board meeting in action.
This gently pleasing dramedy is about a pair of adorable strays in search of a home: Andi (Emma Roberts, who already has big movie-star eyes and a shy smile that hints that Julia will one day be identified primarily as her aunt) and her little brother Bruce (Jake T. Austin).
They’re a pair of foster children who, when they’re not scamming their way around a heartless city, are treated like animals by the latest of their many guardians: a couple of would-be rockers played by Lisa Kudrow, in Cruela de Phoebe mode, and Kevin Dillon, who has dubbed the team “The Carl Scudder Experience.”
The kids aren’t allowed a dog in their apartment building, so Bruce, the inventor, concocts a dumbwaiter that allows their unauthorized Jack Russell to enter and exit through the window. Their caseworker (Don Cheadle, sticking to his usual cool instead of mugging for the little ones) is getting tired of covering up for them.
The Jack Russell and the kids wander into an abandoned hotel where the dog finds two four-footed friends, and the three of them curl up together. The kids’ friends at the pet shop mention that they’ve got a couple of strays they can’t bear to part with either, so the hotel gets a couple more guests. And the kids get the idea of saving all the strays in the city from the mean old dog-catching team.
Avoiding both dumb “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” jokes about bling (this time the dogs don’t talk) and the then-this-happened dullness of “Marley & Me,” “Hotel for Dogs” has plenty of canine chaos as well as an actual conflict to pull the story along. If the place is discovered, the kids might wind up in an orphanage and the dogs will take a permanent nap.
Kids will be as enthralled by this film as you were by the live-action Disney movies of the ’70s. It doesn’t get any sweeter than a roomful of mattresses with kids and dogs jumping on them. Adults (except dog haters) will be amused, as well.
The movie keeps things popping with a wet-nose cam (these pooches could detect a hot dog from space, while the animal-control truck is announced by its evil exhaust fumes), lots of recognizable doggie personalities (one twirls around three times before he lies down, another can’t resist the herding instinct, especially if he spots two flirting humans he thinks should move closer together) and Bruce’s madcap inventions, including one that solves the establishment’s poop problem. The invention also provides an excellent setup for this exchange: “Where are we?” “We’re in deep doo-doo.”
HOTEL FOR DOGS
Bone, sweet bone.
Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG (mildly disturbing situations, crude humor). At the E- Walk, the 84th Street, the Orphium, others.