Reviewed by Adam Boult
Stars Jonathan Silverman, Jennifer Finnigan, Moises Arias,
Eddie Griffin, Rhea Perlman | Written by Brian Levant & Derek Rydall
UK certification U | UK RRP £5.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 96 minutes | Directed by Mike Elliott
The Beethoven series has become the Nightmare on Elm Street of cute animal films. Beethoven’s Big Break is the sixth outing for the eponymous shaggy dog, and just as Freddy Krueger’s shtick of bad jokes and over-elaborate murders had grown woefully stale the sixth time around, so Beethoven’s repertoire has become somewhat stretched, to say the least.
That repertoire, if you’re unfamiliar with the big B’s oeuvre, generally involves a string of visual gags in which our hero, a deadpan St Bernard, steals food, slobbers on people, farts inappropriately and knocks things over, whilst simultaneously facilitating a Xeroxed plot in which his doggy antics bring various people closer together, generally with some criminal activity getting foiled in the process. That formula is adhered to closely in the series’ latest addition, but at the same time the film’s makers have apparently gone for something of a half-arsed reboot.
Eddie, a widowed animal trainer, and his son Billy, decide to take in a stray Beethoven, who this time around has three motherless puppies in tow. Eddie is helping out at a movie studio where director Stanley (the always entertaining Eddie Griffin) is making his own cute animal film starring a pampered Bichon Frise by the name of Frizzy. When Frizzy goes missing, Beethoven steps up to take over the role, forcing the film-within-a-film’s writer Lisa to spend more and more time with Eddie, Billy and Beethoven, in order to crib liberally from their lives for her revised movie script. As Beethoven shoots his scenes it becomes apparent that the film they’re making is a facsimile of the original Charles Grodin-starring Beethoven from 1992; we thus get exactly the same gags from that film, played out as “inspiration” for Lisa’s script.
With post-modern references to earlier Beethoven films drizzled liberally over the plot like so much unexpected dog drool on an out-of-date sticky bun, the writers of Beethoven’s Big Break are having their cake and eating it. If they really wanted to reinvent the franchise, why not actually try something different? Have Beethoven grow metal claws and murder fornicating teenagers in their dreams or something; don’t just get him to do exactly the same things he’s always done, but framed in a slightly different manner, and expect us not to notice.
That said, it’s not a total disaster. It’s 90 minutes of a big dog eating, drooling, and knocking things over to mildly comic effect, with decent workaday support from a likeable cast. Next time around though, let’s see Beethoven battle evil robots, or savage some kids, or rouse Robert de Niro from a coma with magical farts. Go on, go mad. Surprise us.
EXTRAS None