My Dog Tulip
The story of a man who rescues a German Shepherd and how the two become fast friends. Based on the 1956 memoir of the same name by BBC editor, novelist and memoirist J. R. Ackerley.
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- Cast:
- Christopher Plummer , Lynn Redgrave , Isabella Rossellini , Peter Gerety , Brian Murray , Paul Hecht , Euan Morton
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Reviews
i must have seen a different film!!
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
This film is perfect.The story is lovely, the music fits brilliantly, the animation, especially in the way. with a few lines and a little colour, it catches the "character" of the dogs is incredible in it's simple perfection.I came to England (from Scotland) and fell in love with the place thanks to H.E. Bates' books...this little film reminded me so much of them....it's very restrained in it's beauty, summed up by the first line: "In being quite unable to love each other, the Englishmen turn to their dogs"Why did this film not sweep the Oscars? No other animation comes close...apart from perhaps "Mary & Max".Everything about it is perfect.
JR Ackerely is one of my very favorite writers, one of the great stylists of the 20th century and way ahead of his time with his concerns for the homosexual, animal rights etc. Although he didn't think much of himself as a poet he produced a small body of brilliant verse. He also wrote a short play that kicks arse. His use of language and his humor are outstanding as a matter of degree - so funny, so beautiful as impressive as anybody else's work that ever wrote anything, are his books. His bittersweet oddly sympathetic misanthropy, his audacious lack of shame/total honesty are however incomparable/one of a kind. I've read "My Dog Tulip" at least 4 times and it's not my favorite of his works by any means.First of all, I'm disappointed that the lack of creative imagination in this effort resulted in a script consisting of nothing beyond excerpts simply cut from out the book and strung end to end which are delivered as voice-over to images which despite the not entirely uninteresting style of the drawings, serve merely to illustrate the spoken text in a straightforward/pedestrian manner that serves only to subtract from what the mind's eye would see sitting down with the text. What horrifies, mystifies and utterly confounds, though, is that a book that is so LOL funny, and so transcendent / touching happy/sad is thus reduced, somehow in the performance, I think, notwithstanding the addition of so much window dressing (which is frankly at its worst perhaps, actually, in the sequences in which it attempts to do a wee bit more than simply depict in 2 dimensions what we're reading flat out - as for example in the sequence in which Tulip marking her territory urinarily is depicted as a kind of ballet dance which I suppos o u g h t to be funny (especially, I suppose, if you find those pfeiffer "here is a dance to..." comic strips to be funny) but simply falls flat as a loose stool), to coming off as no more amusing than it'd be to be stuck listening to some old codger who has absolutely nothing to say but to blab incessantly, humorlessly, without much enthusiasm/verve at all in fact, enough to put you to sleep, if you wanna know the truth, about his beloved pooch (this, of course, a direct result of the reader's digest treatment the book gets in "focusing" it). As an example, his writing about the battle between his sister and Tulip over the territory that is JRA's bedroom is just too hilarious on paper, but on screen it barely elicits a smile from this viewer.I don't suppose that "My Dog Tulip" was the best subject for film treatment, yet it might have worked beautifully and surely would have played better as a plain old "movie movie" (ie a narrative film/story) than to serve up this ultimately lazy kind of multimedia presentation of 'highlights' resulting in a show and tell snoozefest. I'm sure there actually IS a 3 act drama in there to be divined, written afresh, shot and shown. This movie most assuredly is not it dammit!Disclaimer - after about an hour I packed it in. "We Think the World of You" is another film that does an abysmal job taking what his most popular novel offers in the way of dramatic material and turning into a movie. So sad.
An utterly charming and delightful film which provides a mostly joyful and honest perspective on the trials and tribulations of being owned bya dog. The mores and geography of a time and place from England's recent past are portrayed from a middle- class perspective, with very effective attention to detail. You'll leave wanting to get home right away to your canine, and give him/her a reminder of how much you care.The graphic styles are a great fit for the setting and the sentiments of the story. We left curious about the book's author, and wondering how he fared after the end of the period covered in the film. The last few years of Tulip's life get little-to-no coverage in the film, which short-changes the audience a little. The dog's youth is engagingly well covered, it would have been even more of a delight to get some rich visual story-telling about Tulip's middle- and old-age.
I have been dying to see this film since I first heard about it over a year ago and finally saw it, and, not only did it live up to my very high expectations - it surpassed them! Based on the classic book, "My Dog Tulip" by J.R. Ackerley, this film is an absolute treat from start to finish. It's an animated film and every frame is a work of art. It was hand-drawn but not on paper - it's the first film to be drawn on a tablet and over 100,000 drawings were made. You can almost feel the love and devotion that went into this touching story.It's about a lonely man, who, quite by chance, acquires a German Shepherd dog, who turns out to be the love of his life! I'm sure anyone who has ever loved a dog will enjoy this story. However, just because it's animated doesn't mean it's aimed at children. Quite the contrary - it's definitely for adults as much of the movie involves Ackerley's frustrated attempts to find a mate for Tulip.If you're a dog-lover, an artist, or just someone who appreciates a good film, do yourself a favour and go see this wonderfully unique film! I can't wait to see it again!