3.5 stars. Rated PG, and quite generously, despite brutal behavior and considerable peril
By Derrick Bang
To quote the Joni Mitchell song,
Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got, ’til it’s gone.
Case in point: Whatever happened
to real-world, family-friendly adventure films?
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| A boy and his dog: The bond takes awhile to establish, but once Justin (Josh Wiggins) and Max learn to trust each other, they're inseparable. Which is a good thing, because events in Justin's neighborhood are about to get rather nasty... |
By which I mean, films that a)
aren’t animated; and b) don’t involve witchcraft, fantasy or science-fiction.
In other words, stories that could — theoretically — happen to the rambunctious
kids who live a few doors away.
Once upon a time, such efforts
were a Hollywood genre staple. Early Disney live-action dramas perfected the
formula: Consider the French slum children who foil a bank robbery, in 1963’s The Horse Without a Head; or the
kidnappers who meet their match in a love-struck teenager (Hayley Mills), an
FBI agent who’s allergic to cats (Dean Jones) and a wandering Siamese tomcat,
in 1965’s That Darn Cat. (Don’t waste
your time with the dreadful 1997 remake.)
Earlier still, avid fans thrilled
to the adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Lassie and their various youthful companions.
Nor should we overlook plucky little Benji, who saved two kidnapped children in
his 1974 movie debut. (Sadly, Benji’s various sequels weren’t nearly as
satisfying.)
Of late, though, such films
haven’t merely become endangered; they’re all but extinct. I can’t think of one
more recent than director Danny Boyle’s larkish Millions, and its saga of a 7-year-old British lad who stumbles
onto a heist taking place just as the Euro is about to become the coin of the
realm. And that was back in 2004.
All of which makes Max a welcome relief from the
spell-wielding teens, post-apocalyptic heroines and animated
toys/animals/robots/fairies that invariably get summoned when parents look at
their moppets and say, “Okay, what shall we watch tonight?”
Director Boaz Yakin deserves
credit for trying to revive a moribund genre, and he chose wisely with respect
to the military service dog at the heart of this (mostly) engaging tale. At its
best, Max is heartwarming,
suspenseful and just amusing enough.
But Yakin and co-scripter Sheldon
Lettich never quite get the tone right. Their script is clumsy and occasionally
sloppy about details; their two-legged protagonist spends too much time being
an unforgivably obnoxious little toad; and the general level of peril is way
over the top for their film’s generous PG rating. Nasty, gun-toting weapons
smugglers and the Mexican Mafia? Seriously?
Whatever happened to bungling bank robbers?
