By
PHILIP WUNTCH
DALLAS
MORNING NEWS Movie
Critic Benji
Off the Leash! is no one-trick-pony. The film should win
audiences of all ages and defrost even the most hardened canine-phobe.
Both the
movie and the mutt are that good.
Movies targeted for family trade often seem designed by committees
hoping to lure all demographics. Happily, Benji Off the Leash! attains purity
in every sense of the word; unlike many films of any genre, it
reflects a unified vision. Benji producer/director/screenwriter
Joe Camp has not
stooped to conquer.
In direction, story construction, camerawork and performances
both human and canine, Benji Off the Leash! is the best of the
Benji
canon. Its two-legged
hero is Colby, a stalwart youngster who loves dogs. Its two-legged
villain is Colby's harsh father, whose appropriate last name
is Hatchett. He runs
an illegal dog mill and mistreats all beings, both two-legged
and four-legged.
Colby and Benji have parallel plights, dealing with the rescue
of loved ones and strong maternal bonds.
Benji Off the Leash! has serious undercurrents, but it never
turns grim. The film's canine comic foil is a character named
Lizard
Tongue, whom
Benji befriends and then probably wonders if making friends with
the rascally Lizard Tongue was a wise move. Two goofy dogcatchers
and one eccentric
recluse provide the human comedy.
As before, Mr. Camp films the canine scenes from the dogs' perspectives,
and the desire to reach out and touch is irresistible. Benji
interacts ga
mely with Lizard Tongue, a chatty parrot named Merlin
and even
a cow.
Don Reddy's cinematography exquisitely captures each moment.
With eyes born for movie camera close-ups, Benji is a female
mixed-breed terrier, three and one-half years of age. She is
a wonder-dog,
but she
doesn't hog the show. As played by Shaggy, a dog from the south
side of Chicago, Lizard Tongue is also one formidable scene-stealer.
Two-legged stars also fare well. Nick Whitaker has the essential
soulfulness for Colby, while Duane Stephens has some hilarious
bits as the goofier
of the two dogcatchers. Mr. Stephens also sings a lilting "It Had
To Be You" over the closing credits. Neal Barth relishes each
moment as town eccentric Zacharia Finch, fond of improvising quotes
from phony
sources.
Calling a movie "the best of its kind" often has a condescending
tone. In the case of Benji Off the Leash!, no condescension is warranted.
This Benji's a beaut, for all ages. Woof.
Benji Off the Leash!
A-
Starring Benji, Shaggy, Nick Whitaker, Duane Stephens and Neal
Barth. Directed and written by Joe Camp. Rated PG (mild language,
thematic elements).
In wide release. 90 minutes.
E-mail pwuntch@dallasnews.com
By
PHILIP WUNTCH
Movie
Critic Joe Camp calls the upcoming Benji
Off the Leash! a "new breed
of Benji movie, no pun intended."
Although quick to say that it's "filled with laughs and good spirits,"
the producer/director/screenwriter feels that its themes are "more
topical and contemporary" than those of previous Benji films.
"It tells of the link between animal abuse and human abuse,"
he says, gently but firmly rubbing the three-year-old mutt Benji, who
looks at
him trustingly. "The dog leads people to take a stand
on serious issues."
Mr. Camp now lives in Valley Center, Ca., a community north
of San Diego with his second wife, attorney and Benji collaborator
Kathleen Wolff and
her three children. Other members of the household include
Benji
and Shaggy, both of whom star in Benji Off the Leash!, and
an assortment of cats,
birds and goats.
"Our house is a zoo, and I love it. But I still consider Dallas my
home," he says. "I lived here for 28 years. My oldest sons
grew up here. We made the first Benji movie in McKinney 30 years
ago."
Touring to promote the new film, which opens Friday, he looks
tired but happy. He also seems mellow, an adjective seldom
used by those
who worked
with him in Dallas. But his experiences during the 17 years
between Benji Off the Leash! and 1987's Benji the Hunted make
it easy
to understand
why he's attracted to serious themes in the new movie.
Those who attended the Dallas world premiere of Benji the Hunted
remember his emotion-packed salute to first wife and frequent
collaborator Carolyn
Camp. After a stroke and subsequent complications, she died
in 1997.
"After losing Carolyn, I never seriously considered suicide, but
I thought about it and could see how people could get to that level,"
he says. "At first, I felt that to move forward would be to abandon
Carolyn."
But move forward, he did. Always devout in his faith, he found
solace in the works of Christian songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman,
philosopher
and author C.S. Lewis and retired surgeon Bernie S. Siegel.
"C.S. Lewis married late in life and then lost his wife to cancer,
and his Observance of Grief helped a great deal. And Bernie Siegel's
Love, Medicine and Miracles dealt with how attitude affects healing.
"In the long run, I've been very lucky. I've found two wonderful
women who were w
illing to put up with me. There's always a plan,
and God lets me go my own way until I realize that's not the way he wants me
to
go. Then he slaps me around and says, 'Camp, you're not listening
to me!'"
At times he yielded to a sense of abandonment but in retrospect feels
certain of God's plan.
"I wanted to so badly to go to UCLA film school, but I was turned
down. I felt like God had abandoned me. But had I gone to UCLA, I
would probably have wound up in the studio mainstream, and Benji would never
have been made."
He spent a year pitching Benji Off the Leash! to major Hollywood
studios. Execs who were seriously interested in the film offered
financial plums
- but at too large a price.
"They wanted total control. They would have insisted on adding potty
humor, sexual innuendo and violence, all in the name of giving kids
what they want to see. I've always disapproved of some of the content of so-called
family movies. They're filled with jokes about bodily functions and sexual
references. I know full
well that kids make jokes in private. I did.
But that's where those jokes should be, not in a big public movie theater.
"But the studio negotiations came shortly after 9-11, when nobody
wanted to invest in anything as risky as a family movie. We really
needed money to make this movie, and the studios were willing to throw money
at us. I did a lot of praying. I was certain we couldn't raise money
independently. And then, within a period of two weeks, all our independent
financing fell into place. I made the movie the way I wanted to. And if it's
successful,
it will send a message back to Hollywood."
Thirty years ago, the news that the original Benji came from an animal
shelter resulted in one million rescues from shelters, according
to the
American Humane Association. Mr. Camp spent over three months
searching for the canine star of his new film. He found her (yes,
Benji is a
girl!)
in a Mississippi animal shelter. He also discovered an appealing
mutt in a shelter in south Chicago. He and his family named the
dog Shaggy
and wrote the role of Benj
i's buddy Lizard Tongue for Shaggy,
whose movable facial attachment is long like a lizard's.
"After we found Benji and Shaggy, the story just came about naturally,"
he says. "We could tell that Benji had a fear of being abandoned.
We wondered what had happened to her and we invented the story."
Sounds great, but did directing two canines prove difficult?
"Let's just say that Shaggy proved to be high-maintenance. Benji
is more focused and took direction," the discreet filmmaker
says.
The new film continues the tradition of other Benji movies
in providing a dog-eyed view of the plot.
"In Benji movies, your heart and soul is with the dog," Mr.
Camp says. "In other movies, your involvement is with the kids
who become attached to the dog. I just want to make a movie that
appeals to
someone the way the early Disney movies appealed to me. And I hope
to
make this place a little better than when I found it."
E-mail pwuntch@dallasnews.com
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