My Dog Tulip

An utterly charming and delightful film which provides a mostly joyful and honest perspective on the trials and tribulations of being owned bya dog. The mores and geography of a time and place from England's recent past are portrayed from a middle- class perspective, with very effective attention to detail. You'll leave wanting to get home right away to your canine, and give him/her a reminder of how much you care.

The graphic styles are a great fit for the setting and the sentiments of the story. We left curious about the book's author, and wondering how he fared after the end of the period covered in the film. The last few years of Tulip's life get little-to-no coverage in the film, which short-changes the audience a little. The dog's youth is engagingly well covered, it would have been even more of a delight to get some rich visual story-telling about Tulip's middle- and old-age.

I usually would not watch any film that was animated but because the book MyDog Tulip was so enjoyable I decided to give it a try. I'm so very glad I did. The art work is brilliant. My Dog Tulip is not in any way cartoon-like and is not for children, It is very faithful to the book. If you have never lived in England especially during the period covered in the book I would think you might not connect with the film because it is so very British. A lot of Americans might be put off due to this but I found it was one of the pleasant things about it, having lived in England for a few years. Also the author's companionship with his Alsatian (German Shepherd) dog was really heart warming. I also had an Alsatian and could relate to a lot of the things in the film concerning the problems he encountered trying to find a suitable mate for his dog and also the encounter Tulip had with the chickens could have come directly out of my notebook. I enjoyed this film for its artwork, story and British humor. I will definitely watch it again. Tulip could have been a twin for my dog.

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!

At first this film looks like a short for children. It is not. It is a rather lecherous look at dogs. It is not for prudes. The ideas it discusses seem more shocking because of the innocent animations used to present them. I am one of the least prudish people I know, but found this film repeatedly embarrassing. It seemed unseemly for Christopher Plummer to be relishing such gross things as vomit, diarrhoea, bowel movements, urination, masturbating dogs, getting turned on by dog genitalia, zoophilia, leching over dog breeding, dog erections, tight dog foreskins, and dog behaviour in heat.

It is naughtily amusing by periodically putting a dress on the animated dog Tulip, and has her behave with dog-like motivations but as a human. This makes clear just how different dog behaviour is from human.

The "kindly" old man behaves in ways that belie his gentle voice. He allows his dog to bite children, to bark at all hours, to attack people and poop on other people's property then not clean it up. He does not spay his dog then beats all the dogs attracted. He lets his dog have puppies just so he can derive some perverted pleasure from the birth before drowning them. This clashes drastically with the charming animation which is like entering a painting.

The musical score is rendered with extraordinary crispness. Its cheery oompah band is used rarely to punctuate the story. It is very well done.

The big problem with the film is its deceptiveness. It so very different from what you would expect, you feel tricked into participating in some filthy joke. It is not X-rated porn, but it is quite off-colour and the box should let you know to expect that.

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.