1 July 2017. This ponderous but easy to follow, predictable childhood-animal drama suffers immensely from its apparently low budget. The odd strength and weakness of this movie is its authenticity.
The film's low budget forces the director to use either stock footage or separate shots of animals edited among live shot performances of the young girl, Lily, talking to them off screen. The daylight and shadows in the movie don't always seem to be consistent with the actual time of day suggested by the dialogue at times or the passage of time (I assume the crew didn't have a lot of time to shoot these scenes). The stilted dialogue for real pet shop employees/owners in Thousand Oaks, California was a disservice for them only partially made up with allowing them to include their business telephone numbers in the ending credits, a rather remarkable allowance not seen in any other film.
A lot of film time is spent at the beginning almost becomes a musical video of two girls playing, but without the tight interesting editing of such a video. At other times there are long, prolonged scenes of searching for a dog that goes on and on without much happening, just like perhaps in real life, almost too real. An interesting strength contained in this movie is at times a feeling of authenticity occurs as the dialogue and acting seem to be almost genuine in how parents are, how girls play, how a living sequences of events might actually occur. At times, the movie borders on becoming a home video movie of real events that borders on becoming too mundane and uninteresting. It is apparent that the director tries hard at times to incorporate nice photographic shots to supplement the "low budgetness" of this movie. Perhaps the one area that could have been significantly improved is the shots of the dog, Lucky, especially in the first scene with the dog's departure, there wasn't sufficient bonding to the audience to occur. More time shooting of Lucky's plight would have also helped.
This movie was decent considering the limited resources available for the movie, the acting was decent, but it shows way too much of limited funding to make this movie a great movie. It's worth a one viewing effort, but that's about it. The ending was a delight, but better found in a comedy rather than a family drama. However, however, this movie just might be of interest to little girls who love puppies and worth seeing just for that experience to watch with them.
