In this adventure movie, a Golden Retriever (Shadow), an American Bulldog (Chance), and a Himalayan cat (Sassy), travel on a cross-country voyage after being left a ranch while their owners are on vacation. According to Hollywood Paws, the crew used four Goldens, four bulldogs, and eight Himalayan cats to film all the action. Himalayan cats live an average of 15 years, while Goldens live to about 11, and American bulldogs commonly live between 10 and 15 years. This movie was made in 1993, 22 years ago. These animals are no longer alive.
The movie uses the human characters only briefly, at the beginning and end of the film. The rest of the time, we see and hear the animals, who are gifted with human voices, and who talk without moving their mouths - by telepathy or ventriloquy, I reckon. The animals are Chance, the frisky youngster (voice by Michael J. Fox); Sassy, the fastidious cat (Sally Field), and Shadow, the wise golden retriever (Ralph Waite replaces the late Don Ameche).
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My own feeling is that I have had enough talking animals for the time being. The first movie was good-hearted and I liked it, but since then "Babe" has raised the bar, with animals that not only talk more realistically, but say things that are wittier and more pungent.
So there I was, sitting in a theater with a lot of kids, watching an animal picture. Worse, an animal picture where the animals talked. And even worse, not an animated movie, but a live-action film where the animal's lips don't even move when they talk. How do they do it? Ventriloquism, or telepathy? The movie was about a wise old dog and an impetuous young pup and a snotty cat. Their human owners are about to go to San Francisco on business, and leave the animals with a friend who lives on a ranch on the other side of the mountains. But will the animals understand that they are not being abandoned? Or will they think they're trapped in a nightmarish four-footed remake of "Home Alone"? I started to think of possible titles. "Bone Alone"? I asked myself what I was doing watching this movie. And then a funny thing happened. I got hooked by the story. I started to like the thing. The pets decide to return home, by crossing a mountain range. Along the way they have a lot of amazing adventures, few of them possible, most of them fun.
The director, Duwayne Dunham, and his cinematographer, Reed Smoot, must have had considerable patience to put together all of the complicated stunts in this movie. The animals must have, too. The movie is based on a 1963 Disney picture named "The Incredible Journey," unseen by me. In that one, I gather, the animals did not speak. I'm not sure if they did tricks with mountain lions.
Despite being faithful to the plot of its source material, the remake sacrifices the charm of the 1963 original because of the decision to apply human voices to the animals. In the original, the relationship between the pets is delineated entirely through their tactile communication. The remake relies heavily on human slang and then-topical references (i.e. mention of 'action figures' and Arnold Schwarzenegger, use of the "Mission: Impossible" theme), which succeeds in anthropomorphizing the animals to the point of burlesque. That topicality went against everything Walt Disney believed in regarding the timelessness of his movies, a seal that had regrettably been broken the year before with Robin Williams' free-form improvisations in Aladdin (1992).
Witty dialogue and well-cast voices make this movie a delight from start to finish. Fox and Ameche do a terrific job of giving voice to their canine characters; Ameche is particularly poignant as the older and much wiser Shadow. Field, hilarious as the snide and sharp-tongued Sassy, constantly berates Chance for his impetuous behavior and less-than-perfect manners. The animals themselves perform some riveting stunts.
The American Humane Association" (AHA) monitors the safety of animals on film sets the way Tim Geithner manages Wall St.America has really upped its love affair with animals in recent decades. We finally realize they are sentient beings who indeed think, feel, and reason. We all shudder thinking about the Westerns made in the golden age of Hollywood, where hundreds of horses were brought down in battle scenes and chases with trip wires, which crippled them, and often forced them to be killed (I don't say "put down." It's "killed." "Put down" would be, "Your mama's so ugly her jockey wears blinders".) From Sunday's front page New York Times article, to the recent bill signed by President Barack Obama allowing the slaughter of horses in the U.S. for human consumption, to Sunday's Los Angeles Times article, to HBO's cancellation of its freshman series Luck, horses have been dominating the headlines and talking heads news shows. Who is responsible for the welfare of all animals on TV, video, commercial, etc., and movie sets? Who monitors not only the safety of dogs, cats, etc., but also gives out the "Good Horsekeeping" Seal of Approval: "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture"? That is the purview of the American Humane Association (AHA).
The AHA is no stranger to controversy. I remember when at least a decade ago they underwent a thorough revamping due to revelations at how they were being run. Their agreement is with the Screen Actor's Guild to monitor animals and the actors and trainers dealing with those animals on set. There were high profile horse deaths in the movie Flicka (and others) where thorough investigations by L.A. Animal Services after the fact contradicted the claims of AHA that the animals' deaths were unpreventable. Even more so, we all have many actor friends who come home after shooting with animal stories that are horrific. An actress friend of mine related this story to me:
Now, the AHA is not always invited onto movie sets to monitor fair treatment of animals, where things like this can occur. But why isn't the movie industry forced to open its shooting locations to an organization that is there to advocate for animal actors? The industry isn't allowed to pick and choose which movies using young children it will or won't allow to be monitored. The vulnerable should be protected.
Yet how can an organization that is supposed to monitor the humane treatment of all animals on films, like elephants in the movie Water for Elephants, be the only organization that lobbied against a law preventing the use of the dreaded and barbaric bullhooks on elephants?
I am happy for and welcoming of any organization that is set up to help animals. I am sure the AHA does good work outside of its movie assignments. But look, they are paid by the big studios they are sent to monitor. Their livelihood depends on studios being free to expediently film what they need to get. If elephants or horses could pay them, you would see a fantastic amount of improvement in the way animals are made to do what they do up on the screen.
Sadly, the case is that this is more like Eliot Spitzer cleaning up N.Y. prostitution. WHEN he's invited in. There are simply better men for the job, and it should be mandatory. Animals deserve better. They want to please, and audiences want to take comfort in the knowledge that the antics they are enjoying were not tortured out of animals onscreen with a cattle prod, a bullhook, or a trip wire. Let the AHA continue all the other good work it does, and let's bring in independent organizations NOT paid by the big studios, to advocate for the humane treatment of animals in entertainment. Certainly the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) would be a great start for horse protection, and we can go from there. Wouldn't it be great to see a line in all movie credits that truthfully says, "Nobody was harmed in the making of this film, and at the cast party, all animals got a belly belly belly rub".
Animal abuse on the set of Hollywood movies has been a controversial topic for decades. Since 1939, the American Humane Association has monitored the treatment of animal actors on sets of thousands of films, giving most of them its famous seal of approval, stating that "No animals were harmed" in the making of the movie.
According to a massive 2013 investigation into the American Humane Association's practices by The Hollywood Reporter, 27 animals died on the set of the 2012 blockbuster "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." The creatures, including sheep and goats, died of awful causes including dehydration, exhaustion and drowning. Despite the deaths, the American Humane Association didn't further investigate and eventually gave the movie a "carefully worded" seal of approval, according to The Independent.
The first Rambo movie presents a brutal depiction of combat violence but apparently some of the animals used during its filming were forced to endure real-life suffering on the set. American Humane Association accounts indicate rats were killed in various ways, including being "burned by an actor" and being "squeezed and hurled against a wall." As a result, "First Blood" was deemed "Unacceptable" by the American Humane Association's ratings board.
And who could forget Homeward Bound? (If you haven't seen the original and the sequel, please go back and relive your childhood.) How fantastically feisty was Sassy the Himalayan cat? And remember Chance, Peter's loyal, wise Golden Retriever? And then there was Chance, the mischievous American Bulldog who still had a lot to learn! They're all so lovable, but here's where things get hairy: Only 1 of the 3 was selected as one of E! News Top' 9 favorite movie animals!
The use of human voices and language as well as emotions helps to personify the non-animal characters, which in turn contributes to the overall perspective many have in regards to non-human animals. The voices given to these non-human animals by the actors help to show how these characters feel. To the viewer, it is much easier to understand feelings and emotions when they are explained in human terms or shown to be somewhat human in emotion. Along with the language, the animals are shown doing certain physical movements that support the verbal explanation of their emotions. In Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, the horses were also the main characters of the movie. In this movie they did not have human voices, like in Homeward Bound; however, they horses did have facial expressions similar to human facial expressions which help to allow the viewer to feel what the characters are feeling. 2ff7e9595c
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