Turner & Hooch

Day 167 - 6/16/09 - Movie #166

BEFORE: You can fault my choice of movie, but I assure you there is a method to my madness. In the 1980's the "Buddy Cop" movie was all the rage, and each movie seemed to be trying to one-up the last. White cop teamed up with black cop, Chinese cop teamed up with Russian cop, Sylvester Stallone teamed up with Estelle Getty (I kid you not). 'Tango & Cash", "Red Heat", "Cop and a Half", etc. Why they never teamed up an alien cop with a zombie cop is beyond me.

THE PLOT: A detective must adopt the dog of a dead man to help him find the murderer.

AFTER: Before he was Tom Hanks, Superstar, he was Tom Hanks, actor, and this is the kind of work that an actor must occasionally do. This seems like an exercise in filmmaking - we know all we need to know about Turner from his morning routine - shaving, showering, tweezing, polishing his shoes, pressing his pants. He's fastidious, anal-retentive and borderline OCD, so it's most upsetting when a jowly, drooly dog tears up his house. I initially thought this dog was a Presa Canario, but it turns out to be a Dogue de Bordeaux, also called a French Mastiff.

What the movie illustrates well is how a person might not consider themselves a dog person (or a cat person), but if they spend enough time with an individual dog (or cat), they can become a Hooch, or Roscoe (or Fluffy) person. Hanks is a little over-the-top here - the dog is actually a more restrained actor. And between this movie and "Cast Away", I've seen entirely too much of Tom Hanks in his underwear.

RATING: 6 out of 10 cans of beer