Movie Review: Pup Star

A rather "ruff" performance

Where do I even begin? From the sellouts at Air Bud Entertainment, comes a new mediocre straight-to-video adventure for all ages, Pup Star. The movie takes place in a world where humans have been able to force evolution onto their dogs which makes them able to speak. Here's where one of the many issues I have with this movie come up. Now that dogs have sentience, how come most of them are still treated as second class citizens, and cats even worse (Put a 'F' in the chat for the most oppressed minority, cats). Well not only can they talk now, but they can also sing, and they seem to really love singing, so much so they have a dog version of American Idol, which is the title of the movie, Pup Star. This movie can only be described as 92 minutes of generic torture, and bad lip syncing. Strap in folks, this is a long one.

The movie opens up with the titular Pup Star audition. There are many singing dogs, but the one the audience has to focus on is the small Yorkshire Terrier, appropriately named, Tiny. The pup is accompanied by her human Lou and Lou's nanny, Ida. Just before the performances however, they shoehorn in a explanation for how all the dogs are able to communicate with humans. It is shown through a quick fake advert promoting the fictional "Evolutionary Dog Treats". Unfortunately this never goes anywhere interesting, to be fair, I would watch an entire movie about the origin of these treats, the ethic issues involved, and... oh we're now back to the singing dogs. Viewers are quickly introduced to the judges of the competition, in which all of their names happen to be dog versions of real singers, such as; Lady Paw Paw, Dog Gnarly, Blake Sheltie, and of course no singing competition would be complete without Simon Growl.

  

After being introduced to the judges, we are also introduced to the obvious villain of the movie, a overzealous and selfish Shiba Inu named Bark, yes, just Bark. As the two time winner of Pup Star, he preforms a very generic rock-and-roll song which somehow manages to completely wow the judges and easily earns him a spot in the upcoming finales that are to be held in New York City. After a montage of other dogs trying and failing to impress the picky judges, it is Tiny's turn in which she sings a song about believing in yourself or whatever. This was almost even more generic then the last song, and yet she manages to win over the panel and earns a "Golden Bone" award, which is her ticket to the finales. No one is more proud of her though then her human Lou. Everything at the moment is going perfectly for everyone, but we can't have a movie without conflict, can we?

While practicing her singing in the backyard with a obviously CGI bird a cat comes by and ruins everything. I can't exactly blame the cat though, it was just doing it's normal cat thing, trying to attack the bird. As the cat now chases the bird, Tiny of course gives chase as well, along with Lou following behind. This is when this innocent movie about singing dogs takes a slightly darker turn. Tiny is captured by a dog catcher (Who really doesn't belong in this world filled with sentient dogs, like the dogs could easily sue him now for emotional trauma or whatever), and as the dog is loaded up into the truck, Lou, who has been riding her bike too fast crashes into the truck, breaking her arm. However, Tiny only sees the collision, and from then on is convinced that her human got killed right there... you know, for kids! At least with the human out of the way, we can focus better on our next group of dogs. As Tiny is thrown into the pound, she is introduced to the other dogs there, a stereotypical Indian dog that is Hindu, a fruity (If you have a better adjective for this character please let me know) Dalmatian named Tune, who can't sing, John Ratzenburger and a tough Labordoodle named Charlie.It is revealed that in the morning Charlie is going to be put down... oh you know, for kids! Luckily Charlie had planned his escape for quite awhile, and at midnight manages to escape, though Tiny follows after him believing to not have anything else to lose other then Pup Star, which she plans to win in honor of her human Lou. Thus the cliche duo of a disgruntled old man and a young spry spirit has been formed!

We now skip forward to the next day, when the dogs arrive in New Orleans to meet one of Charlie's old friends, Big Ears, a blind Hound Dog that can sing the blues. Big Ears teaches Tiny how to sing in that style, of course she learns rather quickly. After that scene, they go to Big Ear's house boat where he tells Charlie that an old flame of his doesn't have much time left (You know, for kid- who am I kidding this movie gets unnecessarily dark a lot throughout the film). The duo needed to skip town anyway as the dog catcher from before now accompanied by a bounty hunter are after them. Charlie and Tiny are luckily able to catch a ride in a hot air balloon with a stoner Bearded Collie named Murray (Voiced by the very talented Brian Hull who deserved better then this dumpster fire). It is from here we get a scene that really annoys me. Throughout the movie are very poor editing skills, but it is here we see the most of it. The dog happens to put his paw on a bongo once, and instead of getting more shots where the paw happens to land it, instead the editors thought it was a good idea to instead take that shot and reuse it, but play it in reverse and flipped. We also get an arial shot with some very un-doglike movements.

Now we divert a bit from the dogs to show the humans. Lou, her father and Ida all come to the dog catcher's building where they see neither Tiny nor the dog catcher, they instead find the dogs from before that got left behind. After the kid whines a little, her father reluctantly allows the dogs to travel with them as they go to New Orleans to catch up with our main pups. They arrive in New Orleans just as soon as the duo had left, though Big Ears lets the family know of their next destination, Nashville. The John Ratzenburger dog also gets adopted by the owner of a barbecue restaurant of course. Now we go back to our main dogs as they arrive in Nashville. It is revealed that Charlie's old friend happens to be famous canine country singer, Emily Rose. Even after being told to stay put while Charlie talks to Emily, Tiny can't help, but to sneak into backstage where she suddenly finds herself on stage with Emily. Luckily for her, everything works out in Tiny's favor and Emily Rose shares a duet with her. Once the concert is finished up, Emily Rose offers them a trip to New Jersey, then New York, so then Tiny won't miss the Pup Star show. The next day Emily Rose reveals to Tiny that Charlie used to be a great singer/songwriter until he gave up his dream after his former partner Bark stole his music and sold him out to the dog catcher. Wow what a twist, who could've saw that coming? (sarcasm btw). The movie also quickly checks back in with Pup Star to give us this cursed image. Also the flamboyant dog and the Hindu dog got adopted because plot.

Emily Rose's human drives Tiny to New York on her motorcycle just in time to for rehearsals. What I don't understand is why didn't anyone seem to care that she disappeared for almost a week, also why didn't the producers of the show or anything just give them airline tickets straight to New York after the auditions and all of this could've been avoided. Tiny stupidly confronts Bark about how he stole Charlie's music, which only leads to her being kidnapped right before the show starts. Charlie of course manages to rescue her, but not quite in time as she had just been disqualified for absence. Though they do arrive just in time to interrupt Bark's performance, and prove to everyone that Bark is a phony. With Bark now disqualified, and understanding of the situation, they allow Tiny to preform. Tiny sings her little heart out about her dead owner, only to find out that she is alive and she is right there in the audience! Everyone loves her song, she wins the competition, bad guys go to jail, God's in his heaven, all is right with the world (Sorry I had to slip in a Evangelion reference at some point during this blog's lifespan). That my friends, was Pup Star.

Overall, Pup Star is rather harmless, but I still wouldn't let any children watch as kids deserve better movies. Just because it has singing, talking dogs in it doesn't mean it's any good. I think it's fair that I can only give this film a 1 out of 5 paws up.