My Dog Tulip

When English writer and BBC editor J. R. Ackerley brought home with him a German Shepherd bitch whose owner was in prison, little did he anticipate how difficult would be to care for her. However, despite the fact that Queenie (the original dog's name) was untrained and high strung demanding his full-time attention, he felt unconditionally loved for the first time in his life.

This is a delightful animated movie for adults and older children based on Ackerley's memoir of the same name. Each individual frame was digitally painted with broad brush strokes creating a minimalistic and naturalistic scenes. Tulip is shown acting like a dog when she is taken to the veterinarian, runs out of control in the park, or goes into heat. And life-long bachelor Ackerley used to his peace and quiet is challenged by each one of Tulip's behaviors or problems. This is a movie about unconditional love that dog and animal lovers, or for that matter anybody who has had real feelings for any creature, should treasure.

To understand the origin of Queenie, see the very good comedy drama "We Think the World of You" with Gary Oldman and Alan Bates, based on Ackerley's novel of the same name. It tells how an incarcerated burglar's dog becomes the object of class warfare between his working class wife and parents, who mistreat the dog, and a middle class former boyfriend.

More than anything, this film is lazy. There is no continuity between animation styles, often switching randomly from coloured and established frames and terrible sketches that morphed in shape and form. There is no pattern to what is meant to be "completed" and it took the appearance that the filmmakers only animated the scenes they wanted to. It gave me a headache more than anything else.

As someone with a reactive and sometimes difficult dog, the cavalier attitude of the narrator was exhausting. Tulip is rarely on the leash, the owner details the "unfairness" when others tell him to clean up the poop, and he doesn't do anything to even try to control the dog, insisting that she needs a chance to prove she has intelligence (I'm sorry but this logic is so flawed, if you have an aggressive dog you anticipate that.) The amount of toilet humor is absurd. I'd rather have been watching Shrek for the constant poop jokes.

How they took a funny, witty, and charming book about the love or an owner and his dog and turned it into this lazy, heartless, bleak adaption is beyond me. Such a disappointment.

They say , a dog is a man's best friend and I have no doubt this may be the case with some people .

Not with me.

I'm not a dog lover , even though I am a reluctant owner of one.

My Dog Tulip is a strange little animated film that tells the story of a bond between a man and his Alsatian , Tulip.

At first I enjoyed the story telling and relationship he had with this dog but it soon got a bit tedious. There was too much talk of the dogs private parts and it's toilet habits. All this did was confirm my feelings i have about dogs.

The art work is quirky and a lot of it storyboard animation but I still feel that this will only appeal to real dog lovers . If your not , you might struggle to see what all the fuss is with this bloody dog!

This film is perfect.

The story is lovely, the music fits brilliantly, the animation, especially in the way. with a few lines and a little colour, it catches the "character" of the dogs is incredible in it's simple perfection.

I came to England (from Scotland) and fell in love with the place thanks to H.E. Bates' books...this little film reminded me so much of them....it's very restrained in it's beauty, summed up by the first line: "In being quite unable to love each other, the Englishmen turn to their dogs"

Why did this film not sweep the Oscars? No other animation comes close...apart from perhaps "Mary & Max".

Everything about it is perfect.

Although the film is specifically about a relationship between an older man and a dog, I think that the relationship with pets is reasonably universal. OK there are obvious differences between the dynamics of having a dog and those of having a lizard but generally the nature of the affection and the relationship is similar in most cases. I say this as someone who had a dog for about 8 years and now own 2 cats and for all the animals they became a part of my life to the point I could not imagine being without them and did tend to treat them with an affection that they probably don't deserve as mere animals. Anyway, all this rambling is by way of saying that I was open to this capturing this relationship even if it was not specifically the one I had experienced.

And I genuinely didn't expect the relationship to be like my experiences but somehow I wished they had at least been vaguely similar because as it was I really got no sense of this affection until it is spelt out in the narration in the closing few moments. Up till this point the material is incredibly detached from emotions and almost scientific in its removed observation of Tulip. The film is remarkably crude in its contemplation of her ablutions, her period in heat and so on; I really felt quite confused by this as I was not sure what to take from it. There seemed to very little that was heartfelt or about a sense of companionship in the way I would see it – for the majority of the film Tulip came over as almost an insect in a jar.

The animation is refreshingly rough and personal – there is more heart in this than in the actual material. Unfortunately the animation amplifies the crudity of the film, showing the biological obsessions of Ackerley and it frequently gives the film even more of a sordid feel. Plummer's narration is nicely warm and if there is an hint of affection in the material then his voice brings it out – shame there isn't much to be had.

A really disappointing film then; it proposes to be about the relationship between a man and his dog but presents something that is roundly scientific, cold and lacks any sense of heart or feeling. The animation both helps it be better and also be weaker in different ways.