Sunday, June 14, 2009

Beverly Hills Tex-Mex

Beverly Hills Chihuahua released last year. Ms. X watched it this afternoon. That is pretty typical of Ms. X's responsiveness to the Entertainment Industries latest panderings.

If you don't like Chihuahuas, well, you probably aren't even reading this post.

If you do like Chihuahuas, but you can't stand all the clothes, bling and crap - not to mention lifestyles - those poor little dogs put up with, you might be able to stomach the movie.

It has redemption.

It loses redemption at the end (in a BIG way; more about that later) but for a little while, in the middle, an ugly black and tan sloped back GSD freed the socialite bitch from a dog fighting ring and from the golden chains of her past.

Chloe lost her booties, lost her diamond collar and gained a eau' de Mexico No. 5 with the help of a well fed and groomed crew of Mexican strays.

That's where animal movies always lose it for me. Come'on. We're supposed to believe there are fat purebred bulldogs running (quite cleanly I might add) around the streets of Mexico City? Or the infamous alley cat gang in Stuart Little: if memory serves me there was a British Shorthair, Abbysinian, a couple Orientals and the ringleader was a Russian Blue?

Yeah right.

After wondering around for a while Drew Barrymore and Andy Garcia - I mean Chloe and Delgado - stumble upon the Lost City of Chihuahuas, deep in the heart of Mexico.

Hidden in the barren desert ruins is an enormous free ranging pack of ... Chihuahuas. Their ancestral home perhaps. How they survive is as questionable as how their leader, a long haired applehead, gets his grooming done.

But I suppose if you can feed a 100 odd tiny dogs in the desert, you can keep your long wavy locks, long and wavy.

Plump, well cared for dogs posing as strays is minor nitpick. Purebreds posing as strays is probably not so significant either, if it weren't for the moment at the end of the movie, after Chloe and Papa "kiss" (Papa, btw, voiced by George Lopez was one of the few voice-dog duos that really worked. Drew and Chloe, not so much.) that the movie producers forgot they were making entertainment, and slapped a warning label on their product. The warning was something to the effect of 'owning a pet is a big responsibility', 'lifetime commitment', ask your mommy and daddy first...

Now why the heck not, you might say.

Sorry. I am not one of those people who sit back and go "WOW. How Great was that of Disney to put that message out there! I of course would never irresponsibly purchase a dog, but I am well aware there are very few people like me and it is soo important that all the stupid people who just think Chihuahuas are cute and would run out and buy one so they could put ugly bling all over it get this very important message!".

Nope. That message was directed at me. I was the idiot Disney had in mind (so were you, don't kid yourself). And it's just another notch in the belt tightening around the neck of pet ownership.

Look at the movie for what it was. Paris Hilton covered her little purse dogs in bling from head to toe, and it was so popular that Disney made an entire movie about little purse dogs. They didn't have to do that. But if they hadn't, they couldn't have made a lot of money off purse dogs covered in bling.

While telling us those little purse dogs are too big a responsibility for the common man.

Especially those much loathed deer head chihuahuas. (Which Chloe is.)

Why, did you know that some people abuse deer headed chihuahuas just because they are deer headed? Yup. Says so right on the internet. So only evil people would breed dogs with such obvious faults that make people abuse them.

(Ignore the fact please, that appleheads have much higher c-section rates than deerheads. Forced c-sections are not abuse.)

Ok. So maybe Disney is right that the world is full of stupid people. Ms. X resents being lumped with any of them.

No Mas.

Some interesting articles on the dogs in the movie:
The Dogs from Beverly Hills Chihuahua


Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Ms. X recommends: Go ahead, show it to the kids. All in all it's not bad and if you don't mind Piper Perabo grinning like the Joker, you can watch it too.

1 comment:

Pai said...

I love how anyone who breeds a non-extreme version of a breed (Pugs and Bostons with little bit of nose, or a spitz-style Pomeranian for example, or a Peke that doesn't look like an Angora rabbit) are labeled the Scum of the Breeding Earth.

Nevermind that those 'degraded' types used to be the norm for those breeds, and some people (us lowly pet owners) actually prefer them.
Have you seen those old fashioned 'spaniel-coated' Pekingese? I've seen a few modern photos of old-type Pekes, and I think they're much more beautiful.

I love long-haired Chihuahuas... if they were bred a bit bigger, would the apple-head not be as much of a problem for them? As it is, I would probably never get a Chi because I'm paranoid about their moleras.