IN PRAISE OF 'BENJI'  

by Andy Klein

The canine charm of 'Off the Leash!' is hard to resist

We had to wait 16 years after Return of the Jedi before George Lucas gave us – unfortunately, as it turned out – The Phantom Menace. That's one year less than we've had to wait since the last Benji movie, the sublime 1987 Benji the Hunted. But now the uncanny canine – or (at least) the latest incarnation of this Menudo-esque dynasty – has finally hit the big screen again with Benji: Off the Leash!

Think I'm joking? Think I'm being snarky? Well, think again. It's a rare day – and a rarer night – when I find myself in agreement with family values pimps like Michael Medved and Rev. Ted Baehr, but, when it comes to Benji, Med and Ted and I are pups of a litter, all flocking togitter.

Since dogs are sadly short-lived in comparison to humans, it goes without saying that there is a new Benji this time around – and I'm telling ya, it's a bitch. No, really: In the grand tradition of Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously, the male character Benji is herein played by an anatomically incorrect performer. (Medved and Baehr seem oddly unflapped by this manifestation of decadent showbiz cross-dressing.)

In fact, the character isn't even called Benji until the last few minutes of the film. At the start of this neo-Dickensian fable, the titular hero is but a puppy, whom young Colby (Nick Whitaker), with a distressing lack of invention, has named Puppy. Colby's father is a cruel, heartless breeder named Terence Muncey Hatchett (Chris Kendrick). Familiarity, it's said, breeds contempt, but Hatchett breeds contemptibly, and the more familiar with him we become, the more we pray for a gang of retributive Presa Canarios to get all Reservoir Dogs on his ass.

Puppy is apparently the result of a clandestine assignation between Hatchett's most valuable purebred bitch and some fly-by-night street mutt with a smooth bark and paws that refresh. Hatchett orders Colby to ditch the financially worthless Puppy, but Colby, with the aid of a parrot (Gypsy), raises Puppy in a secret hideout in the woods.

At six months old, Puppy is clearly wise beyond his fractional years, and he begins to make plans to spring Mom from Hatchett's kennel, before she is killed by the strain of Hatchett's illegal overbreeding. Along the way, he becomes friends with another mutt, the lovable, not altogether bright Lizardtongue (Shaggy). Lizardtongue has been given his name – by buffoonish but benevolent animal-control officers Livingston (Randall Newsome) and Sheldon (Duane Stephens) – because his tongue is so obscenely long that ? well, let's not even go there.

Of course, by the end, Mom is rescued, Lizardtongue finds a loving home, and Puppy wins the role of Benji in a nationwide talent hunt that echoes, in exaggerated form, the process by which she actually was found in a Gulfport, Mississippi, animal shelter. The meta implications of all this make me dizzy.

Yes, the supporting performances here are broad and hokey, and writer/director/producer Joe Camp seems to think we're all children or something, but it would take someone more cynical than myself to resist the doggies. Of course, they're not as cute and brilliant as my dog, but...

Truth be told, no matter how unsophisticated the characters and story elements in Benji movies may be, their technical achievements are impressive; they would be worthy objects of study in film schools. Since the lead players are, let's say, dialogue-challenged, their feelings and thoughts must be created primarily through editing. As an exercise in pure cinema, Benji: Off the Leash! and (even more) the nearly wordless Benji the Hunted are no less enlightening and impressive than Rear Window. Camp's editing creates an illusion of extreme canine intelligence that is almost impossible to resist.

And why would you want to?

Benji: Off the Leash! Written, produced, and directed by Joe Camp. With Benji, Shaggy, Nick Whitaker, Nate Bynum, Chris Kendrick, Randall Newsome, Duane Stephens, Christy Summerhays, and Neal Barth. Citywide.