Beethoven

This movie has various elements and themes that are not only annoying and pushed way too far, but also not the best acting. It's a very melodramatic movie, dose have some crude humor and mild swearing, and isn't really appropriate for its intended audience. Flaw 1: The little girl, Emily (played by Sarah Rose Carr), was almost as much of a spoiled little brat as Drew Barrymore or the Olsen Twins! She's one of those, "aw, so sweet cute little kid" characters, fake and makes you want to run off and puke in a bush somewhere. She says various annoying lines in the film, such as yelling "dog killer!" at her father for supposedly putting the dog down because it was considered a threat. One of the most annoying characters in a movie I've ever seen! Flaw 2: It's one of those "dogs are a member of your family" movies... DOGS ARE NOT PEOPLE! I can't stress this enough! Lately there's been this trend with fat women who call their dogs their "fur-children" and treat them like people... ugh. Dogs are dogs. I'm not saying it's right to be cruel to dogs but treating them like humans, especially considering the various activities dogs do every day, is just messed up. Flaw 3: The anti-animal testing stuff could seriously scare kids. The vet, played by Stanley Tucci, is selling his patients to animal testing laboratories. I don't honestly care about animal testing and kids won't either, but if you ever have to take a family pet to the vet, and your kids have seen this movie, you'll have to burden yourself with explaining to them that vets are not monsters who sell pets to vivisection projects. Flaw 4: The eyes on the dog look fake, is the dog a puppet at some parts? There are various others, I just figured I should list off the worst. To be fair, Beethoven had one or two funny moments, okay soundtrack and an original plot. But it's so damned corny, with the picture-perfect, pastel family in the suburbs. Beethoven was probably the worst movie off 1992 - actually Ferngully: the Last Rainforest was - but there are worse things you could be watching, like The Hunger Games or An Inconvenient Truth.

"Beethoven" is a film that easily illustrates that some folks in Hollywood just ain't right! After all, you have a family film with an adorable dog and cute kids....and a plot involving an evil vet (Dean Jones) who wants to earn money by testing out exploding bullets on their pet's head!!! What were they thinking?!?!?! Now, had they made it a cartoon (like the original "101 Dalmatians"), then it would have seemed cartoony and unreal. But here, you take a beloved Disney actor and he really likes to make money torturing and murdering dogs...and for younger kids especially, this IS real. I am so thankful that I never showed this to my kids when they were little.... I would probably STILL be paying their psychotherapy bills if I had!! The bottom line is that if you have older kids, you can laugh off the plot and enjoy the film mostly for its puppy scenes at the beginning. But I would NEVER show it to younger kids (perhaps 7 and younger)...never. A clear case where the sequels couldn't help but be better...unless they, too, are about vivisection!! By the way. All this is a real shame as the cast was good and Beethoven lovable. But the script was just perplexing.

This movie is an otherwise delightful comedy, but its major theme is the abduction of puppies for "scientific" experimentation. This is not suitable material for children to see. A movie should not start out with me wanting to put a bullet through someone's brain: Dean Jones as Dr. Varnick. Beethoven reminds me of something Stephen King would do: Candy coat something gruesome like he did with Christine or The Green Mile. Why did John Hughes find it necessary to subject us to animal experimentation and probably torture, and wrap it in the disguise of a comedy? Why? Both he and Amy Holden Jones have written in pictures that I have liked and that I deem respectable; Breakfast Club, Mystic Pizza, so I have no idea where they were coming from by adding this warped, malevolent current into Beethoven. Certainly the picture could have done without it and only suffered from its inclusion. It would have been easy to like Beethoven. Had it been a simple comedy with some adventure, I probably would have given it a 7 or an 8. It's a shame that someone with immature, Satanic sentiments had to spoil the picture.

As far as family films go, this is definatly a movie for them. If you are watching "Beethoven" on your own, you won't find anything special. Basic plot of there a villians trying to kidnap dogs to do illegal experimental tests. One of the puppies escape the villians. The puppy runs to a home with a dad who refuses to have pets. But when his children beg and beg, he lets them have the puppy they name "Beethoven". The main villian comes back to get the puppy once again. But will the father save the dog he hates in time? You'll have to find out. :-D Not my type of movie, but show it to your kids or family. 4/10

A dog named Beethoven is trying to save his family and himself from some bad guys. This is awful. Actually nearly every single family movie in the 90's were bad. But this is the bottom. I hate the dog, I hate the family and most of all, I hate the screenwriter. It's such a pity, that you can't vote 0 here on IMDb. The dog should have been shoot and the family drowned by those bad guys. The only good about this movie is... sorry, no! There is nothing good about this movie. Just another stupid family movie. I have to say that Hollywood gives me a bad taste in my mouth with all their sweet happy endings and family love. I know all movies contain this, but this is just too much of it. Not only is the dog annoying and stupid. The acting is horrible and most of the actors ends up in B-television movies. 1 vote for this movie.