Thanks to my SweetPrince who works for Petco, SportsBoy and I got to attend a local VIP screening of Hotel For Dogs. they gave us free popcorn, soda, and candy plus some cool swag (tote bag, calendar, t shirt & book). It was pretty cool! The movie is very sweet. Predictable of course, but we enjoyed it. The main characters are a brother and sister played by Emma Roberts and Jake T Austin. Emma is Julia Robert’s niece and oh yes, she has the Robert’s family dazzling smile! Jake stars as the youngest brother on the Wizards of Waverly Place on Disney (one of SB’s favorite shows) and we both got a good laugh out of one line in the movie when Emma’s character tells Jake “Wow, you really ARE a wizard!” Of course you needed to know his TV persona to get that little joke 🙂 Don Cheadle plays their social services counselor and I just love him. Lisa Kudrow does a very funny turn as their utterly ridiculous foster mom and it really made me miss seeing her every week when Friends was on.
The main message in this movie though is all about shelter dogs. Before our viewing started a representative from Pedigree foods talked about how many dogs end up in shelters each year (4 million). Pedigree has partnered with Petco with their adoption program and is donating $1 per movie ticket sold (up to $250k) to the Petco Foundation. He said that 60% of the dogs in the movie were shelter dogs and that many of them ended up adopted by the cast and crew. The dogs really steal the movie.
Perfect for kids – nothing overly scary or too too sad at all and even the tense moments are over fast enough and of course everything ends up perfectly happy at the end 🙂
SportsBoy and I give it two paws up. (ha. ha. ha. yeah, had to go for the obvious pun there. Sorry.)
Trees & Flowers & Birds! 
I’m SURE I know a girl that might like some swag if it doesn’t work for you guys …
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It does sound kinda cute. I haven’t seen a kids movie in many years, though. I’ll wait for it on Netflix.
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That’s nice to know about the donations per movie ticket. As much as our “rescued” dog drives me [expletive expletive expletive] insane, I’m all for shelter animals (much prefer the cats, though).
Two paws up. You cheeser.
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I’ve been wanting to take my 8 year old to a movie. I think you just helped me choose which one.
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Sierra really liked it, and this was cute. I was bored, but incredibly grateful that we didn’t have a repeat of the Marley & Me experience.
We went to Marley & Me during Christmas break expecting a very comic, youth oriented film (it’s rated p.g.) Trailers seemed to center around laughs and dog.
But it was a very *adult* film, for most part. And it has… both an unborn baby scene and a dying dog part at the end which they milked and milked, drawing it out, showing him die from intervenous thing… god.
It’s like the whole movie was for that tragic half an hour. My daughter began crying at end, and she continued to cry for 15 minutes after we’d left the theater. And then we had *the conversation* about death on the way home.
Thanks, Hollywood.
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