Film Reviews

Firehouse Dog

• Rating:
• Director: Todd Holland.
• Starring: Josh Hutcherson, Bruce Greenwood, Steven Culp, Bill Nunn.
• Details: US / 111mins (PG).

With all the animation and high-tech special effects fronting stories that rely on pop culture references to get the laughs, Firehouse Dog retreats to the safety of the old-fashioned family film - which is a good and a bad thing. Good in that it's a wholesome, good-natured kids movie; bad in that the kids are used to something much more these days. Firehouse Dog sees Rexxx, Hollywood's number one canine actor, fall from an aeroplane while shooting his latest blockbuster. After a miraculous intervention during his freefall (a rotten tomato truck), he winds up in the possession of rebellious Shane Fahey (Hutcherson), a pre-teen who lives alone with his firehouse captain father Connor (Greenwood). When Rexxx becomes the firehouse mascot, it keeps the fire fighters' morale high as their station is threatened with closure. Okay, so it might rely on canine bodily function gags to get most of the laughs (Rexxx snores, farts, burps and poos in the stew), but Firehouse Dog is not entirely a comedy. There's a sizable subplot that deals with mysterious arson attacks that break out all over the city (which in turn is a rip off of Backdraft), and Shane, a promising young shamus, dedicates himself to solving it and saving his father's job. This isn't the regular enter-loveable-dog-at-the-last-minute-to-save-the-day scenario, as there are a few genuinely tense moments at the climax, while the relationship between dog and boy loses screen time to the relationship between son and father.

Review by Gavin Burke