Beverly Hills Chihuahua

To anyone who saw the trailer to this movie, then went to see it and didn't like it, I have to ask: just what the hell were you expecting?

Well, I did see the trailer, and although I thought the movie was decent for what it meant to be, I was extremely disappointed by the end of it. Here's why: in one of the versions of the trailer, there is a scene, set in a large area of ancient presumably Aztec ruins, in which hundreds upon hundreds of CGI'd chihuahuas are dancing and singing in a giant Busby Berkeley-type number (here's what I'm talking about). I waited the entire movie for this, and although there is a brief party-like scene in the ruins, there was absolutely nothing close to this in the movie itself. I understand that trailers are often made before the final cut of the film, but this really floored me. All through the end credits, I kept expecting the chihuahuas to come back for their big encore, but they never did. I was enraged and, had I been the kind of person who does such things, would have demanded my money back.

On the bright side, the entire thing was well-cast and the narrative flowed along a good clip. The human-level story involved a young woman who lives in a spoiled princess world, but who must undergo an abasement in which her world is ruptured and she learns what (female) life is really about (symbolic loss of virginity). This is mirrored on the doggie-level by a spoiled-princess female chihuahua who undergoes roughly the same kind of journey. From their respective loss of innoncence, each of them end up finding something resembling true love, albeit with the type of male they would have previously shunned as beneath them. The doggie story is deficient, however, in that the male canine hero who rescues her repeatedly throughout the movie (a German shepherd) is not the one she winds up with (a fellow chihuahua---is that doggie racism?). Her doggie lover-hero spends the entire movie searching for her, and just shows up at the end for the final scene. As they say, one more pass through the typewriter, please!