All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (1996)

Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I really enjoyed this film. The songs are very good, especially Count Me Out and I Will Always Be With You. The new characters are interesting, especially Sasha La Fleur, she has style, class, sass and a gorgeous voice. Red, is a pretty good villain. And the returning characters are actually pretty good. The film may have many mistakes, but i really like it.

This film to me is one of my favourite childhood films, where I remember watching the film over and over, falling in love with it more. After revisiting it, I still found it particularly charming, due to the storyline and the characters. The storyline is just right for the younger audience... easy to understand. In my opinion, the musical aspect of the film isn't the best I've seen from a film, but I can still remember the lyrics and the tune to this day. Reviews for the film have hounded it's continuous mistakes throughout the film, and changing of actors from the original. The organisation and planning of the film didn't help its potential, due to moving from one studio to another. Finances didn't help this film either from which is demonstrated from the overall quality of the animation. There are plenty of mistakes in this film, which has harmed its reputation. The actors chosen for each role, in my opinion, were sound choices despite some criticism choosing Charlie Sheen over Burt Reynolds. I'm my opinion however the film should've been better planned, organised and received better funding from MGM, then the film would've got the reputation it deserved. I believe it is full of character, which is why I remember it so well. The songs are good, despite irregularities, mainly focusing on "I Will Always Be With You" which is a beautiful and brilliant duet, despite Charlie's singing voice being clearly different. 7/10 is what I will give for this film due to its brilliant character and potential, despite the poor organisational planning leading to the mistakes evident in the film.

I do like the original, despite one or two flaws. I did feel it was a little too dark for children, but it was beautifully animated and moving. This sequel is definitely inferior in comparison, but there were a few redeeming merits. The animation is not very good, there were a number of colour changes and very flat backgrounds, and I felt that the animation on Red was a bit too frightening for children. The songs were very pleasant, especially I will always be with you, but not memorable. Then again, neither were most of the songs in the original. I did like the singing voice of Charlie, provided by Jesse Conti, not so much Charlie Sheen speaking-it just wasn't Charlie. Also Sheena Easton was lovely as Sasha; if you want to know a little more about her, she sang "A Dream Worth Keeping"(FernGully) and "Now and Forever" with Barry Manilow.(Pebble and the Penguin, which I like more than this to be honest)I loved Mark Watters' incidental music too. I liked the character David, but I found Anne Marie a lot more likable, I cannot watch the end of the first film without getting teary-eyed. Likewise with Carface, Vic Tayback was definitely better, but Ernest Borgnine did a very good job with the voicing I felt, but Carface lacked the calculating manipulation that made him so memorable in the original. Bebe Neuwirth's Annabelle did little for me too, I preferred Melba Moore's angelic interpretation. Now another flaw, and the main flaw, was the story. It was a good idea, with some neat subplots, but it was told way too fast. The studio should have focused on accuracy and detail rather than piling on rushed subplot and another. Now for the main villain Red, a bit too frightening for my liking, but I liked his song, with the Spanish flamenco like rhythms. George Hearn did more than adequately with the voicing,very menacing at times like in his song, but I felt he was out of character. I wouldn't initially associate Hearn with villainous roles. A more inspired choice would have been Tim Curry, as long as they didn't make him do a phony accent that they tend to burden him with. The script wasn't bad, but it did need a lot more work, whereas Borgnine and Dom DeLuise provided the laughs, Sheen and Easton were a little less convincing. In conclusion, a disappointing sequel to one of the more memorable Don Bluth movies, but it is not as bad as the Secret of NIMH sequel, which was so awful I didn't know what to say. 6/10 Bethany Cox

MovieAddict2007 wrote:"Part of the advantage of Don Bluth moving away from Disney is that he didn't need to suffer their endless tirade of straight-to-video, poorly animated cash-in sequels." How so? When Don Bluth left Disney in 1979 the Disney Co. was not making direct-to-video sequels, so that could hardly have been one of Don Bluth's reasons for leaving. The direct-to-video sequels (Return of Jafar) and the spin-off TV series like TailSpin (which used Disney's Jungle Book characters) didn't start until the Michael Eisner era. I'm not a fan of the direct-to-video sequels from Disney or these things like All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 or the seemingly never-ending Land Before Time sequels but let's keep the history of these things straight. Disney didn't make sequels until long after Don Bluth had departed from Disney.