That's ONE Take on Reincarnation
This weekend's review: Oh Heavenly Dog.
I was of mixed opinions about Oh Heavenly Dog when I sat down to watch it. On the one hand, the title wasn’t very promising. On the other, the summary was. Now that I’ve seen it, I’d say my opinions are still mixed, though for more sophisticated reasons.
The story takes place in London, where an American detective named Browning (Chevy Chase) has taken up residence. One day, he’s hired to become a bodyguard for a woman. When Browning goes to talk to this woman, he finds her dead in her apartment, and moments later is stabbed in the back himself. He then finds himself in the processing section of the afterlife, where a man named Mr. Higgins (Stuart Germain) informs him that he’s right on the borderline between heaven and hell, and thus needs to complete a task to determine where he’s going. In this case, he needs to solve his own murder, and in order to do this, he’ll be reincarnated. Unfortunately, because it’s a rush job, one of the only bodies available is a dog (Benji, with Chase providing voiceover narration), which is going to make his job more difficult. Though he does run into a bit of luck when he falls in with Jackie (Jane Seymour) a reporter who’s been offered a chance to write a book about the murder (a political figure is involved, and it looks like a sordid affair gone wrong). The two of them investigate in their own ways, each bringing different advantages to the table. On the one hand, Browning can sneak into places and has more knowledge of the situation than Jackie does. On the other, Jackie can drive and has opposable thumbs.
Now, none of these concepts are new. We’ve seen dead people having to learn the truth about what happened to them, we’ve seen people get put into animal bodies while retaining their human minds, and while I can’t think of any off the top of my head, I’m almost certain there are other movies out there that combine the two concepts. Even so, there are aspects of this particular telling that work for me. While the scenes where Browning and Jackie are collecting clues don’t always click, the moment where Browning starts to put the pieces together is very well done, and I can admire all the elements that went into making it work. I don’t think I can say the writers were playing entirely fair, but they came pretty close, and I applaud them for that. I also really like the view of the afterlife that we’re given here. While it kind of looks like a bureaucratic nightmare, it’s also presented in a very humorous way, with silly P.A. announcements (voiced by Lorenzo Music, most notable for voicing Garfield in the cartoon show, which seems appropriate) and employees who aren’t just soulless automatons. There’s even a moment where a lightsaber-like object is deployed, with Higgins saying “We had it before Star Wars!” Given that this was released in 1980, I’m impressed by how quickly the writers/filmmakers jumped on the reference bandwagon. Leaving that aside, though, I’d honestly watch a short film about the workings of this particular afterlife, assuming it had a similar tone. Honestly, I’d probably have a more entertaining time than I had with this movie.
It’s not that the movie is actively bad, but it misses more than it hits. Part of this is due to the fact that most of Chase’s narration is either exposition or snarky comments that are clearly supposed to be funny but generally aren’t. Another problem is that some of the scenes, even if they make sense in-universe, clearly only exist to show off the tricks Benji can do. And because they’re so obvious, they break your immersion (although not your suspension of disbelief). A third problem, and probably my biggest one, is that there comes a point where Browning shouldn’t be able to get away with his antics. Over and over again, he gets out of where Jackie left him and sneaks into a building, generally disrupting her investigation in the process. She’s clearly getting exasperated with him, even telling him at one point that she’s going to send him to the animal shelter if he keeps this up. He keeps getting in the way, and she never makes good on her threat; in fact, she tells the doorman to her apartment that he should let Browning in or out whenever he wants to go out. While the plot demands that Browning have a certain amount of freedom, I feel like there were ways to do it that didn’t turn Jackie into a doormat. Can you direct your forces a little better, Admiral Plot Device?
There are a few other little things worth noting. On a related note to Admiral Plot Device, there are several instances where Browning is only able to advance his investigation thanks to literal divine intervention, which feels like cheating (especially since the point was supposedly for Browning to solve the case by himself). To make matters worse, one of the more egregious incidents features a person who I swear we hadn’t met before, which really feels like the writers were backed into a corner. Then there’s the climax where we learn the full truth, which is fine as far as the dialogue goes…but the time and place where it happens makes the murderer look like a complete idiot. Finally, and more amusingly, I like the fact that both the opening and closing credits say “Chevy Chase and Benji as”. Now there’s a credit you don’t see every day…
While the movie was reasonably entertaining for me, I probably wouldn’t recommend it on the whole. I doubt it would hold up on a second viewing, and a fair few people will probably dislike the comedy elements even more than I did. But I would try to track down the afterlife scene, if nothing else-if this movie has one virtue, it’s that bit.
CAT ALERT: There are three cats in this movie, though none of them have major roles. Unfortunately, I can’t go into much more details for spoiler reasons, but suffice it to say I wasn’t dissatisfied with their appearances.
I was of mixed opinions about Oh Heavenly Dog when I sat down to watch it. On the one hand, the title wasn’t very promising. On the other, the summary was. Now that I’ve seen it, I’d say my opinions are still mixed, though for more sophisticated reasons.
The story takes place in London, where an American detective named Browning (Chevy Chase) has taken up residence. One day, he’s hired to become a bodyguard for a woman. When Browning goes to talk to this woman, he finds her dead in her apartment, and moments later is stabbed in the back himself. He then finds himself in the processing section of the afterlife, where a man named Mr. Higgins (Stuart Germain) informs him that he’s right on the borderline between heaven and hell, and thus needs to complete a task to determine where he’s going. In this case, he needs to solve his own murder, and in order to do this, he’ll be reincarnated. Unfortunately, because it’s a rush job, one of the only bodies available is a dog (Benji, with Chase providing voiceover narration), which is going to make his job more difficult. Though he does run into a bit of luck when he falls in with Jackie (Jane Seymour) a reporter who’s been offered a chance to write a book about the murder (a political figure is involved, and it looks like a sordid affair gone wrong). The two of them investigate in their own ways, each bringing different advantages to the table. On the one hand, Browning can sneak into places and has more knowledge of the situation than Jackie does. On the other, Jackie can drive and has opposable thumbs.
Now, none of these concepts are new. We’ve seen dead people having to learn the truth about what happened to them, we’ve seen people get put into animal bodies while retaining their human minds, and while I can’t think of any off the top of my head, I’m almost certain there are other movies out there that combine the two concepts. Even so, there are aspects of this particular telling that work for me. While the scenes where Browning and Jackie are collecting clues don’t always click, the moment where Browning starts to put the pieces together is very well done, and I can admire all the elements that went into making it work. I don’t think I can say the writers were playing entirely fair, but they came pretty close, and I applaud them for that. I also really like the view of the afterlife that we’re given here. While it kind of looks like a bureaucratic nightmare, it’s also presented in a very humorous way, with silly P.A. announcements (voiced by Lorenzo Music, most notable for voicing Garfield in the cartoon show, which seems appropriate) and employees who aren’t just soulless automatons. There’s even a moment where a lightsaber-like object is deployed, with Higgins saying “We had it before Star Wars!” Given that this was released in 1980, I’m impressed by how quickly the writers/filmmakers jumped on the reference bandwagon. Leaving that aside, though, I’d honestly watch a short film about the workings of this particular afterlife, assuming it had a similar tone. Honestly, I’d probably have a more entertaining time than I had with this movie.
It’s not that the movie is actively bad, but it misses more than it hits. Part of this is due to the fact that most of Chase’s narration is either exposition or snarky comments that are clearly supposed to be funny but generally aren’t. Another problem is that some of the scenes, even if they make sense in-universe, clearly only exist to show off the tricks Benji can do. And because they’re so obvious, they break your immersion (although not your suspension of disbelief). A third problem, and probably my biggest one, is that there comes a point where Browning shouldn’t be able to get away with his antics. Over and over again, he gets out of where Jackie left him and sneaks into a building, generally disrupting her investigation in the process. She’s clearly getting exasperated with him, even telling him at one point that she’s going to send him to the animal shelter if he keeps this up. He keeps getting in the way, and she never makes good on her threat; in fact, she tells the doorman to her apartment that he should let Browning in or out whenever he wants to go out. While the plot demands that Browning have a certain amount of freedom, I feel like there were ways to do it that didn’t turn Jackie into a doormat. Can you direct your forces a little better, Admiral Plot Device?
There are a few other little things worth noting. On a related note to Admiral Plot Device, there are several instances where Browning is only able to advance his investigation thanks to literal divine intervention, which feels like cheating (especially since the point was supposedly for Browning to solve the case by himself). To make matters worse, one of the more egregious incidents features a person who I swear we hadn’t met before, which really feels like the writers were backed into a corner. Then there’s the climax where we learn the full truth, which is fine as far as the dialogue goes…but the time and place where it happens makes the murderer look like a complete idiot. Finally, and more amusingly, I like the fact that both the opening and closing credits say “Chevy Chase and Benji as”. Now there’s a credit you don’t see every day…
While the movie was reasonably entertaining for me, I probably wouldn’t recommend it on the whole. I doubt it would hold up on a second viewing, and a fair few people will probably dislike the comedy elements even more than I did. But I would try to track down the afterlife scene, if nothing else-if this movie has one virtue, it’s that bit.
CAT ALERT: There are three cats in this movie, though none of them have major roles. Unfortunately, I can’t go into much more details for spoiler reasons, but suffice it to say I wasn’t dissatisfied with their appearances.