You know you’re in a lot of trouble when a movie opens up with the wedding of two dogs. Hi, I’m Baby. I’m the German Shepherd who runs security here at Upcomingdiscs. If you work for either UPS or Fed Ex, no introductions are necessary, and that spells R U N. I want to know why it is that you humans think that dogs want to look and act like people. We don’t need no stinkin’ sweaters. We don’t want to walk on our hind legs. And we don’t want to get married. Now I know why some politicians want a law to protect the definition of marriage. The truth is I get along just fine being a dog. I kind of have it made here. Someone always brings me my breakfast. I get belly rubs and treats all day long. The only job I have is protectin’ this place, and that job’s a cinch. Sure, it would be great to be able to open that fridge door by myself and the whole opposable-thumbs challenge gets in the way every now and again. But at the end of the day, it’s a dog’s life after all. There’s a reason why people say stuff like that. You may think you have all the power, but when I give those delivery guys a piece of my mind, who do you think does all the runnin’? ‘Nuff said.
Every now and then Gino asks me to look at some dog movies that get sent here. Okay, yeah, some of these things do happen to slip through my security net. Gino likes that, for the most part but, I’m afraid I really fell asleep on the job for letting Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 get through the door. And someone’s gonna pay down the road for that one. But it was my mistake, so it was only fair I had to watch the stupid thing and then write the review while Gino sits here and plays his pinball machine doing something called “poppin” all the dang time while I’m trying to concentrate. Sensitive ears here, by the way. Anyway… here’s what I found out.
As I already mentioned, Chloe (Yustman) and Papi (Lopez) are getting married, and Aunt Viv (Blakely) is throwing them the biggest wedding you ever saw. I’m talking Beggin’ Strips, not those dry generic things. We jump to four months later and Rachel, now played by Erin Cahill, is in the tropical rainforest with Aunt Viv to do some research for six months. Sam, now played by Marcus Coloma, is left in charge of the dogs. It looks like a pretty simple job dog-sitting two newlywed dogs, except now they’ve had five puppies. No nursing required. These guys sure developed fast. Chloe is trying to be a responsible mom, but Papi is trying to be their buddy and tells them crazy stories of ancient Chihuahua Warriors and all of the brave things they used to do, that is until they usually got eaten by a German Shepherd, but Papi doesn’t tell them that part. The stories inspire the pups to act up and get into all kinds of trouble, which gets Papi in trouble with Chloe. They end up ripping up Aunt Viv’s house, so Sam decides to take them all back to his parents’ house and check out the old hood. Delgado shows up and has a family secret to share. It seems that he had to abandon his two pups at the Beverly Hills Police Station, and now he wants to see how they’re doing as grown police dogs. The pups try to help, but it only gets them in trouble.
There’s bad news at the Cortez house. They haven’t been keeping up with the bills, and the bank is about to take their house if they can’t come up with $40,000 in three weeks. Of course, the pups decide to help out by entering the Beverly Hills Dog Show hoping to use the prize money to save the house. That doesn’t work out so good. But, when bad guys rob the same bank, the pups remember those warrior stories and decide to prove they’re worthy to be Chihuahuas.
If you were hoping for a repeat of whatever you liked about the first movie, you’re not going to be very happy with this movie. Most of the stars of the first movie are gone. I missed Cheech Marin most of all. He’s funny. This movie becomes more like the Buddies movies with a lot of the same kinds of situations and dialog. The problem is that Chihuahuas aren’t near as cute, and this movie doesn’t have as good of a story. It’s hard to worry about the Cortez family moving losing their home when Sam’s girlfriend is, like, a billionaire. I know they’re too proud to ask for help, but we know that they wouldn’t be out on the street. It’s a good thing there are a couple of German Shepherds in this movie, or it would have been a lot worse, I can tell you that. And that spells U G L Y.
Video
Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 is something Gino calls an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The image is something called 1080p, and I don’t even wanna know what the p stands for. It’s got an AVC/MPEG-4 bit rate. (I have something called a BABY bite rate.) The movie looks very bright and shiny most of the time. This high-definition stuff is pretty cool. It looked awfully real to these doggie eyes. Even the dark scenes looked really good. I could see lots of shadow and details just like real life. I guess this movie was made by a dog, because we see real good in the dark. The people’s faces look all natural-like. The best thing is the colors. There are so many of them, and they all look just like nice new doggie toys. I give it a paws-up.
Audio
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is almost all upfront. Dogs can hear stuff a lot better than humans. But even I didn’t hear much of anything going on behind me. And I always know what’s going on behind me. You could hear the people and dogs talking and sometimes barking, so everything you need was right up front the whole time.
Special Features
Beverly Hills Chihuahua Challenge: It’s a kiddie memory game.
Music Video: (2:37) This Is My Paradise by Bridgit Mendler
Blooper Faux Paws: (3:23) Humans and dogs messing up a lot.
Final Thoughts:
My tail just couldn’t get its wag going at all during this movie. In fact, I might have taken a snooze in there somewhere, but don’t tell Gino or he might not let me watch any more dog movie to review. You might as well be asleep, because you’re dreaming if you think this one will measure up to the fun of some of the better dog movies Disney has put out before. Maybe I should make some home movies of me chasing away those delivery guys. Now that would be funny. And you won’t even have to dub in fake human voices. You see, these guys get the idea without me having to say a word. This movie tries to play on your memories of the classic dog movies; unfortunately “memories don’t pay the bills”.
