Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Oh, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, how I want to hate thee. Yet, it is a movie about talking animals, and, if there is one thing you can count on in this world, talking animals are funny.

Can you feel my soul being torn in two? It’s like I have an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other. It looks like the devil won, so, if you are excited or interested in this movie, just stop reading now. We have nothing left to believe in. There are no more truths. Talking animals are NOT always funny, and this is the movie that shattered my belief.

Drew Barrymore provides the voice of Chloe – the most pampered pooch in all of the land. She’s a Beverly Hills Chihuahua complete with perfume, pedicures, Sex and the City-type gab sessions with her puppy pals and a diamond doggie collar that would drive Jared to cry out like B-movie starlet who scores a night with George Clooney. However, her whole world is about to change when her owner’s whiny niece, Rachel (Piper Perabo), irresponsibly takes off to Mexico with the dog, and Chloe decides to leave the hotel to look for a better dinner.

Will Chloe ever make it home?

Can she make it on the mean streets of Tijuana?

There are two types of people in this world. Those who think Beverly Hills Chihuahua is a cute funny movie, and those who would go running and screaming from the theater begging God to take away their eyesight so they never have to see it again.

The movie is full of every cliché and pun that filled my nightmares leading up to the night I saw Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

We have the Pepe Le Pew of dogs from the wrong side of the tracks trying to win Chloe’s heart. We have the fish out of water confused about how to cope in this big bad scary new world. We even have a few love stories and a major character with a deep, dark mysterious past. Not even a historic pairing between Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood could save this movie, and no one involved in making it wants to strive for a level higher than mediocre.

While being cloying, trite, predictable and painfully unfunny are bad enough, Beverly Hills Chihuahua’s biggest sin is the attempt to claim to be kid friendly, while throwing in some non-kid friendly moments and lines of dialogue. Writers Analisa LaBianco and Jeffrey Bushell seem to be infused with the spirit of Michael Vick as they give us scenes of dog fighting, another pup trying to romance Chloe by promising “to chew hard to reach places” animals who want to make Chloe into a tasty appetizer and a canine cult leader!

I hated Beverly Hills Chihuahua so much, I might get a pet cat.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua rated PG for some mild thematic elements.