My Dog Skip film review

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MY DOG SKIP

Animals and children are a potent movie combination - loathed by directors, yet emotional gold when it comes to mining the audience's emotions.

In My Dog Skip, a charming coming-of-age drama based on the book by Willie Morris, director Jay Russell has two star performers at his disposal: pint-sized Frankie Muniz who looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and man's best friend Enzo (Frasier's four-legged friend), a shaggy little Jack Russell with a huge personality. Together, the pair are almost irresistible, getting up to all sorts of mischief in the backwater idyll of Yazoo, Mississippi.

The film opens in the sweltering summer of 1942. Willie (Muniz) is a lonely yet spirited eight-year-old who finds it difficult to make friends of his own age. Bullied by the bigger kids at school and somewhat fearful of his disciplinarian father Jack (Kevin Bacon) who lost his leg in the Spanish Civil War, Willie has only one real friend in his life: next-door neighbour Dink Jenkins (Luke Wilson), the town's star athlete who is preparing to go to war.

With Dink overseas fighting for Uncle Sam, Willie retreats into his shell, spending all of his spare time alone in his room. His mother Ellen (Diane Lane) desperately wants to give her son a helping hand, so secretly buys him a Jack Russell puppy called Skip (Enzo) for his ninth birthday.

Willie's father is completely opposed to the idea, but Ellen stands her ground ("He needs a friend," she states firmly) and Skip becomes a permanent if rather unruly addition to the household.

The dog's outgoing personality helps Willie to make friends with the prettiest girl in school, Rivers Applewhite (Caitlin Wachs), and to gain acceptance to a gang including Big Boy Wilkinson (Bradley Coryell), Henjie Henick (Daylan Honeycutt) and Spit McGee (Cody Linley).

The boy's relationship with his pet helps him to understand important lessons about life, including the strength of forgiveness, but the bond between them is severely tested when Dink returns home from war, a completely changed man, and a pair of moonshiners attack Skip for stumbling on their secret cache of illegal booze.

Director Russell keeps the emotional syrup to a minimum as he sketches the burgeoning friendship of Willie and Skip in a serious of humorous and touching vignettes: Willie training Skip to become an Army para-puppy, a close encounter with the moonshiners in the cemetery, a farcical game of American football.