Guide Dog (2006)

You won't be disappointed!

Touches You

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

As Good As It Gets

Guide Dog (2006) *** (out of 4) Sequel to GUARD DOG has the same dumb canine walking down the street when he notices a job opening for a guide dog. He takes the job and goes out with the blind but he keeps getting them killed due to a variety of strange occurrences. This sequel isn't nearly as funny as the first film but there's still plenty here to love. Once again the colored pencil drawings are incredible to look out as the detail and weird visuals it gives are something truly marvelous to look at. There were times when I was drawn away from what was going on in a scene just because the beautiful colors really caught my focus and wouldn't let it go. Another major plus here is that once again we're greeted with a very dark sense of humor, which of course means this here isn't for kids. The various ways that the blind people keep getting killed might turn some people off but trust me, it's all done in good fun and it works. The highlight of the film would have to be the sequence where the dog is trying to walk the woman across the road before she gets hit by a car.

I enjoy the short films of Bill Plympton. The artwork is lovely (featuring unusual colored pencil animation) and the sense of humor is always rather twisted and weird. GUIDE DOG is exactly what I expected from the man--for good and for bad. I was not disappointed, though very little caught me by surprise either. I can almost guarantee if you watch it you'll like it.The film begins with a dopey-looking dog responding to an ad for guide dogs. However, he's not the most competent dog and he isn't very lucky, so again and again bad things befall the blind people he's trying to guide. It's all pretty funny--somewhat like a Roadrunner cartoon.This film is one of the bonus shorts included with the wonderful DVD "A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films"--a must have for fans of the genre.

This is one of the animated film shorts on the DVD, "A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films." This one is pretty wacky. There is no attempt to make the animation look real. The guide dog featured looks more like a stuffed stomach with 4 spindly legs and very few teeth.He tries hard, but every new client meets a disastrous fate.Amusing to watch, as part of a larger collection of film shorts. As a stand-alone it would not be too interesting.I must comment on the overall process of watching a series of film shorts. At first I feel very refreshed, because it is easy to sit still for 5 to 10 minutes. However, after 5 or 6 of theses short films, I begin to get restless, suddenly longing for a real movie. Funny how that works!

This is unusual: a sequel to a cult-favorite animated short film. What's not unusual is that like most sequels, it's worse than the original. That is unfortunate, because the original Guard Dog is so funny.The problem with this short is that it completely hinges on the familiarity of the audience with the previous short, and then sort of changes the character. The thing that made Guard Dog so funny was that the dog's hyperawareness actually shows his complete lack of comprehension of the situation. We get in a typical yapper's head, and it's silly because it's so absurd.Things are absurd in this short, but the dog is too aware of it's absurdities. The difficulties aren't just a product of his imagination, they randomly are actual aspects of reality, and the difficulty the dog has in protecting his masters isn't a result of his own spastic ditziness, it's just something that happens. The character has changed, the type of humor has changed, and yet the movie itself basically depends on prior knowledge of the character to fill in the blanks as to why any of this is happening.I really appreciate Plympton's style of animation because it's simple and even the drawings themselves are very silly, but the quality in terms of his sense of humor and storytelling is very mixed. Sometimes I find a short of his that I absolutely love, and then later find something of his that doesn't work at all. I'm glad he's out there, but I don't like everything that he makes.--PolarisDiB