Dog enthusiasts will discover their meddle checked by Puppy Love (now streaming on Amazon Freevee), a romantic funny in which charming dogs discover themselves caught in an opposites-attract plot that stinks like an ended can of Alpo. Pretty Little Liars star Lucy Hale and the man who plays The Flash on TELEVISION, Grant Gustin (his 2nd second-fiddle-to-a-pooch motion picture after Rescued by Ruby), co-headline the movie, playing owners of dogs – dogs who are even more credible as characters than their human equivalents. Is there a possibility that this motion picture isn’t a, you understand, thing that woofs and in some cases piddles on the carpet? Yeah, naturally, however considering this is a Freevee flick that would be on the Hallmark Channel if it wasn’t for all the cursing, the chances are slim.
PUPPY LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: SHE’S mentally turned off. Goes out a lot. Likes to consume and celebration. A slob – her house is jumbled with bric-a-brac and spilled food. HE’S a raw nerve. Stays home all the time. Can hardly make it to work. Obsesses over his Pez dispensers and Star Wars antiques. Is a germophobe. More than a little OCD. THESE are your 2 rom-com leads. THIS WILL NEVER EVER EVER WORK. What an inequality. Totally helpless. Might also turn the television off today!
But! Don’t touch that call! Circumstances, potentially including fate or simply ordinary coincidence or the work of film writers all too comfy with inveterate cliches, will bring Nicole (Hale) and Max (Gustin) together. You simply gotta hang in there with this plot: As a salve for Max’s unstable habits, his expert informs him to get a treatment dog. So he summons up all his nerve and goes out the front door to the animal shelter, where he embraces a flop-eared spaniel who’s rather potentially the mellowest dog to ever exist. He names her Chloe and starts doting on her, as she should have. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the area, Nicole keeps identifying a shabby roaming dog on her method to the clubs or to fancy-ass homes where she works as a home stager. He’s a cutie, and friendly, and prior to you understand it, she brings him home for a bath, and he assists by scarfing some ancient ramen off the flooring. I suggest, someone’s gotta tidy up around here. She names him Channing Tatum, potentially due to the fact that Tatum was when in a motion picture entitled Dog.
These individuals love their dogs. Now perhaps it’s time for them to have quality human relationships? Easier said than done. One or the other swipes best and they wind up at the park, where Chloe and Channing Tatum waste no time at all getting to the nitty-gritty: Two tickets to Humptown, infant. It doesn’t go as well with Nicole and Max, due to the fact that she basically force-feeds him habanero chicken wings (“It’s truth serum,” she describes) which activates his everything-phobias and discovers him barfing and racing throughout the park to a horrible porta-potty to launch his swollen intestinal tracts. As bad dates go, this one’s on par with Titanic-meets-iceberg.
At this point, we’re ABSOLUTELY PERSUADED that Max and Nicole will never ever see each other once again, and the motion picture will heretofore include parallel stories in which these 2 individuals look after their dogs and carry on with their definitely incompatible lives. But we’d be incorrect as shit! See, these dog owners are careless, and didn’t get their furballs repaired. Chloe’s knocked up, and starts the movie script’s jokey main conceit, which is as possible as the James Webb Telescope snapping a shot of the Gilligan’s Island cast on the surface area of Pluto: Max and Nicole reunite Channing Tatum with Chloe due to the fact that they feel it’s their duty as pending dog-grandparents. The plot then forces Nicole and Channing Tatum to relocate with Max and Chloe for optimum incongruous-personalities hijinks, and pushes them into goofy circumstances, e.g., doggie lamaze class. I believe there’s a Just Bone Each Other, Already joke to be made, however I’d never ever sink that low, or play spoiler, although you understand precisely what’s going to take place from here on out.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Puppy Love is Must Love Dogs fulfills Knocked Up fulfills another recent Hale rom-com, The Hating Game.
Performance Worth Watching: Hale and Gustin suffice to leaven the movie’s sappy, nostalgic crudola with a layer or 2 of legitimate feeling – however when stars of their noteworthy skill are upstaged by cute-dog response shots, it’s a clear sign that the writing isn’t up to snuff.
Memorable Dialogue: This Nicole line gets this motion picture’s Who Writes This Shit Award: “Better a mutt than a slut!”
Sex and Skin: The incongruous-personalities hijinks consist of a scene in which Gustin attempts to cover his naked self up with a teensy washcloth.
Our Take: Bright, glossy, empty, dumb rom-coms like Puppy Love aren’t unsalvageable; all they require to do is make us laugh. But the ha-ha-has are ha-ha-hard to come by in this formulaic piffle with a movie script that lures me to break my self-imposed guideline about making hacky ChatGPT jokes. So I’ll state this about Puppy Love: It’s plug-and-play. Paint-by-numbers. Just-add-water. Use-once-and-destroy – although I wouldn’t advise utilizing it when, and simply avoiding right to destroy.
I understand – I’m being mean. Not all movies require to strike Mach-10 in order to captivate us, and this motion picture is slick, drinkable home entertainment, made by specialists in order to keep specialists like Hale and Gustin and dog handlers and finest young boys and grips and script medical professionals and directors utilized. And yet, your home entertainment is not ensured when the primary characters are boilerplate types with little in the method of identifying qualities, slogging through one dull scene after another, surrounded by witlessly rendered supporting characters, consisting of the goofy work customer, the goofy friends, the goofy moms and dads, the goofy veterinarian, the goofy pharmacist, the goofy poodle owner, the goofy lamaze trainer… it goes on. Enough already. Uncle. Mercy. This is me, tapping the f— out.
You’d believe directors Nick Fabiano and Richard Alan Reid would have the wherewithal to comprehend that the product here is drooping as thrice-boiled asparagus, and lean greatly into the cute-dog shenanigans, however no, their objective is to make us appreciate Max and Nicole, and indulge fart and vomit gags, not get us oohing and awwwing over frolicking puppy-wuppies. It’s undoubtedly challenging to do not like Hale and Gustin, who do their damnedest to reduce the movie’s cringeworthiness, however their work here is thankless go-nowhere wheel-spinning. Puppy Love? More like POOPY LOVE!
Our Call: Bad dog motion picture! BAD DOG FILM. SKIP IT.
John Serba is an independent author and movie critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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