[Dog Days of Summer] What if a Hotel… but for Dogs?
By: Ethan Parker
Tags: Film, Movies, Dogs, Diversity, Movie Review

As someone who grew up in a home filled with three siblings, I saw plenty of movies growing up that I never had any interest in. While I was attempting to sneak R-rated movies past my parents (they don’t read my articles so no tattling on me), my siblings were still picking through the more kid-appropriate movies we owned. One such kid's movie my siblings loved, yet I never held any interest in was Hotel for Dogs: a Nickelodeon produced movie about a small batch of teenagers banding together to shelter stray dogs in a big city. Even though I watched Hotel for Dogs and movies like it begrudgingly, it’s always worth going back to these films that even tween me didn’t like; you never know if you’ll gain a new perspective with a more mature mindset.

It’s been at least a decade since I last viewed Hotel for Dogs, so I had no idea how I’d feel upon revisiting it. Sadly, Hotel for Dogs never drew any strong emotions from me either way. There’s plenty of creativity in set design, props, and even a rather original story to boot, yet Hotel for Dogs never executes anything it’s attempting in any special way. Talking about films that don’t elicit strong emotions is usually tough, and Hotel for Dogs is no exception to that, yet there’s a few things worthy of discussion on both the good and bad ends of the spectrum.

For the good, Hotel for Dogs has a lot of heart put into its set and prop design. The many funky contraptions used in the film are extremely creative and fun to watch in motion. Seeing these sparks of creativity in the most fundamental levels of a film’s style is always a treat, doubly so for a kids movie, since it pushes creative little minds to explore new, productive hobbies. Easily, the best scenes in Hotel for Dogs are when the movie showcases its zanier contraptions (especially the golden fire hydrant and the driving simulation), but there’s more to the film than wacky inventions.

The dogs are also adorable (obviously).

Hotel for Dogs’ narrative has its heart in the right place, and ultimately teaches positive messages for children. Sadly, those morals can be a tad mixed up with our leading characters knowingly doing illegal activities, even having several run-ins with law enforcement and animal control that would yield extremely harsh consequences. Obviously, Hotel for Dogs is a fantasy, something that honestly couldn’t be done by the hands of five teenagers in real life, which is probably why there haven’t been any stories about kids breaking into abandoned buildings to make impromptu animal shelters (as far as I know). Anyway, outside of the overall visual creativity and the originality of its base premise, Hotel for Dogs suffers greatly from narrative pacing issues, and continuous strokes of the usual clichés you’d expect to dampen any true potential for greatness.

Speaking heavily on clichés would spoil the film, which I’ll avoid doing despite the fact this film came out eleven years ago, and nobody’s talking about it, anymore; but to keep it simple, the typical tween movie romance clichés, unfortunately, show up in the narrative, there’s a rather heavy reliance on slapstick comedy which is fine in premise, yet doesn’t do anything to advance the narrative, and any non-main characters are solely an assembly of long-tired tropes, so much so, it’s borderline comical (at the movie’s expense). Outside of strictly cliché-related issues with the narrative, Hotel for Dogs has by far the strangest pacing I’ve seen in a kids move for some time. Hotel for Dogs is almost entirely a second-act film, which essentially means we barely have any actual setup to our characters and their situation, swiftly taken away to music montages and other menial events up until the last half-hour of the film, where any sense of conflict is introduced, then swiftly taken care of to grant us the expected happy ending. Running close to an hour-forty in length, Hotel for Dogs keeps up a quick enough pace to not have anything drag, but it’s at the expense of presenting a real narrative, being a more visual experience than strictly a story one.

Don Cheadle’s role should’ve just been credited as “exposition dump: the character.”

The only other aspect to Hotel for Dogs worth mentioning is the performances, which are all fine, yet there’s nothing spectacular on offer. You’ll see plenty of familiar faces if you’re aware of the modern big-budget, Hollywood circuit, as well as kid's programming in general. Faces such as Don Cheadle (of MCU fame), Jake T. Austin (Wizards of Waverly Place), Emma Roberts (We’re the Millers), and plenty more populate the cast. What I hadn’t expected, though, was despite the fact that the acting is about what you’d expect, there’s a great amount of diversity to boot. We have a central female lead, accompanied by a male actor from many different racial and cultural backgrounds. On top of the leading cast, there are several Black actors taking larger roles, and one side character is played by an actor coming from an Iran-American mixed family; pretty cool stuff, especially for a time when diversity in media — especially for kids media — wasn’t “as big of a deal” as it is now.

Ultimately, Hotel for Dogs is a rather “milk toast” movie; nothing particularly exciting in most areas, but it works for what it’s trying to accomplish, although nowhere near with flying colors. Sadly, although I’d recommend Hotel for Dogs for families with small children, it’s not streaming anywhere, only available for digital purchase/rental across all the usual platforms, and of course, through physical purchase as well. If you’ve already exhausted the Disney+ library with your kids, Hotel for Dogs might suffice for some fun with the family.