Shelby (2014) Reviews

• Great Family Movie

  lewensr2016-01-02

  Watched this movie with my family tonight. My kids can rarely sit through a whole movie but had their eyes glued to the screen from beginning to end. This is a well written film with some popular actors. Great family picture. Chevy Chase plays his part well. Tom Arnold does too. The dog farts got my whole family laughing as we have a boxer and boxers do have gas. I will recommend this film to family and friends next Christmas. The scene towards the end where the dog catcher lays into the rich lady lays out some nice values for the kiddos. This film has potential to be another Christmas classic. I will definitely watch it again as this is one of those movies that I could see more than once and not get sick of it.

• Christmas classic

  taragroth2016-01-03

  We watched this as a family on Christmas. Plenty of fart jokes for the whole family which the kids thoroughly enjoyed (what kid doesn't like fart jokes?). The characters had dimension and the cast played the characters well. I especially liked Chevy Chase in this movie. I am sure all of the middle children out there are cheering for this movie that focuses on the bond that forms between the middle child and adorable Shelby. There were several twists in the plot that I didn't see coming. In particular, the suspected demise of Shelby scene. Overall, an enjoyable Christmas movie that will be added to our annual list of Christmas movies to watch every December!

• Awful film

  josh_lambert19912019-02-03

  A silly storyline and awful acting is what your getting with this movie

• A dog for Christmas

  Prismark102015-11-30

  Shelby is a corny family film that works if you watch it with kids in the run up to Christmas although even then their mileage will run out by the end. Shelby is an unwanted beagle always escaping the dog pound and never getting away as the dogcatcher Doug (Tom Arnold) always catches up with him. However Shelby manages to impress a rich lady and her son who come into the pound looking for a dog and are impressed when Shelby performs some tricks but he again escapes from the pound on Christmas Eve and gets taken in by aspiring young magician Jake (John Paul Ruttan). However Doug has been offered a substantial sum of money by the rich lady to retrieve Shelby and Jake's family are not keen on another mutt in the house. So Jake keeps Shelby's stay in the house a secret but he just causes canine chaos. Rob Schneider is the voice of Shelby who narrates the story and Chevy Chase is Jake's grandpa. The film starts brightly enough as Shelby tries to evade Doug after he escapes. I guess it loses a little impetus when Shelby is hiding out in the family home but then picks up as the kids get together to rescue him. It is not too schmaltzy or preachy, it has a bit of knockabout humour and even some toilet humour. As I said it is a bit of festive fun if you want to watch it with younger kids.

• Seen It All Before

  neiljones19812015-11-29

  Shelby follows the traditional model for these sort of films: Boy can't have dog because, in this case, mum doesn't like them. Boy meets dog, or Dog meets boy in this instance. Boy gets emotionally attached to dog. Boy loses dog. Boy decides to get dog back, eventually leading to boy keeping dog. Okay so the idea has been used many times over, best known example of this sort of film is the 2005 film Lassie and in the same vein as Shelby, is the 1991 film Bingo. Shelby is the dog who flees from the dog pound and ends up in the basement of a family and is drawn to the attention of a boy called Jake who is (stereotypically in these sort of films) isolated and friendless. The dog pound owner wants him back to receive $1000 from some posh lady and her obnoxious offspring for him, so the (admittedly half-hearted) chase is on. Eventually, as the model dictates, posh lady talks herself out of the dog and Shelby ends up living with Jake and family. Unfortunately the presence of Chevy Chase, Tom Arnold and the voice of Rob Schneider can't rescue this film. The script depends on fart jokes, the "witty" banter/thoughts of the dog is hit and miss, and the less said about the grandpa when he decides to blog, the better. Lead boy here is John Paul Ruttan, who won an award for his role in the remade Robocop film and appears to be building up a nice portfolio of work. Unfortunately an actor is only as good as his script, which isn't particularly polished and often comes across as having been made up as you go along. A watchable film which doesn't bring any new ideas to the table and may have benefited from some extra script work. Ah well, better luck next time.