Hotel for Dogs

*Spoilers* So, I have been known to go to kids movies from time to time. But when I saw the previews for Hotel for Dogs, I thought it looked a little... idiotic. Also, it kind of freaked me out that the main boy in it is played by the boy who voices Diego on Go Diego Go, because I knew I would be conscious of it for the entire movie.

Well, this week I found myself on vacation in New Jersey. With a 10 year old sister. Who I wanted to take to a movie. Next thing I knew, I found myself at Hotel for Dogs with two kids. Of course, being the tweens they are, I was not sitting near them. They sat in the back row and I was instructed to go and sit further up front.

You know what? When it got to be about 3/4 of the way through, I was FREAKING glad that I wasn't sitting near them. Why? Because I was crying like a big flippin' baby. You know those idiotic previews? The ones where all they showed was silly inventions for feeding dogs and playing fetch with dogs? Well, what they didn't show you was that the two main kids in the movie are a brother and sister who are in FOSTER CARE. With HORRIBLE foster parents who put locks on the cupboards so they won't "steal food" and feed them nasty crap and play horrible "music" together. They also don't tell you that partway through the movie the foster kids get in big trouble because of the hotel in which they are keeping dozens of stray dogs, and GET SEPARATED. As in, you have gone through too many foster parents, no one wants some siblings as old as you, now go live in some group homes. WTF? That is when I started crying. Then, all the dogs were sent to the pound. Where we were witness to two evil dogcatchers talking about how it was going to be a BUSY DAY the next day (you know, because they'd be killing all the dogs), and the other one said that he could USE THE OVERTIME. More tears.

What the hell kids movies? I wonder what goes through 10 year old kids heads when they watch these movies. It's obviously not as upsetting to them as it is to me. To me the idea of being seperated from your only living relative, your sibling who you are incredibly close to, perhaps to live apart forever, is DEVASTATING. Horrifying. Definitely tear-worthy.

In the end it all goes back to fairy tale land when community donations allow them to actually open and run a hotel for dogs/boading service. And the wonderful social worker (Don Cheadle) and his wife decide to adopt the children.

Truthfully, when I saw Don Cheadle's name in the credits I thought that it might not be so bad. And I was right. It was a cute movie, but if you're a total softie like me, you might shed some tears. If you have a younger person to watch it with, I'd recommend it. It was a cute movie, and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.