Movies

About This Movie: Hotel for Dogs

By Leroy Douresseaux
January 15, 2009 - 04:55

DreamWorks Pictures Presents
In Association with Cold Spring Pictures
A Donners’ Company/Montecito Picture Company Production
Hotel For Dogs (2009)
DIRECTOR: Thor Freudenthal
WRITER: Jeff Lowell (based on the book by Lois Duncan)
PRODUCERS:  Lauren Shuler Donner, Jonathan Gordon, Ewan Leslie, and Jason Clark 
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Michael Grady (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Sheldon Kahn A.C.E.
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: William Sandell
COSTUME DESIGNER: Beth Pasternak
COMPOSER: John Debney

Cast:  Emma Roberts, Jake T. Austin, Kyla Pratt with Lisa Kudrow, Kevin Dillon and Don Cheadle

Opening date: Friday, January 16, 2009
Running time:  1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating:  MPAA – PG for brief mild thematic elements, language, and some crude humor

The new family film, Hotel for Dogs, stars Emma Roberts (Nancy Drew), Jake T. Austin (“Wizards of Waverly Place”), Lisa Kudrow (“Friends”), Kevin Dillon (“Entourage”) and Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda).  It’s a comedy adventure that shows how far love and imagination can take you.

Their new guardians want a strictly no-pets household, so 16-year old Andi (Emma Roberts) and her younger brother, Bruce (Jake T. Austin), are in a dilemma because they have a pet, a perpetually hungry dog named Friday.  However, they are fast running out of ways to keep Friday under wraps and hidden from the heads of household, Lois (Lisa Kudrow) and Carl Scudder (Kevin Dillon).

Andi has to use her quick wits to help find a new home for Friday, a Jack Russell Terrier.  The ingenious kids stumble upon an abandoned hotel that is already a home to a couple of resourceful strays.  Using Bruce’s talents as a mechanical genius who can turn everyday objects into mechanical marvels, the duo transforms the down-and-out hotel into a magical dog-paradise for Friday – and eventually for all Friday’s friends and for every stray they find.

When barking dogs make the neighbors suspicious, Andi and Bruce use every invention they have to avoid anyone discovering “who let the dogs in.”

Visit the Hotel for Dogs film site.

 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12