Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's 1942 Yazoo City, Mississippi. Will Morris (Frankie Muniz) is a runt picked on by 3 bullies. His only friend is next door neighbor and local high school ball star Dink Jenkins (Luke Wilson). Dink goes off to war right before his ninth birthday. His father Jack (Kevin Bacon) is home with a war injury. His mother Ellen (Diane Lane) gets him a Jack Russell terrier but his father refuses to let him keep it. He wants to shelter him from the inevitable lost but she won't let it stand. Little girl Rivers Applewhite likes Will and his dog Skip. He befriends a colored boy who tells him that he's never heard of Dink but Waldo Grace is the best ballplayer. Dink sends him a German helmet and ammo belt. Will brings them in for show-and-tell and he is terribly picked on. The bullies dare him to spend the night in the cemetery to join the group. He and Skip battle moonshiners, stays all night and ends up joining the gang. Dink returns from the war haunted. Will is doing horribly at a baseball game and hits Skip. Skip runs away and gets into trouble with the moonshiners.This is generally a touching kid with dog movie. There are some rough patches and trying to fit in too much. The story probably could use a lot of trimming. It's based on Willie Morris' autobiographical book and meanders like real life. Some of it plays falsely like the rough looking moonshiners. The narration is unnecessary and a more simple narrative would be a vast improvement.Frankie Muniz is a good child actor. The bully is trying too hard to be a bully especially if he's suppose to become friendlier later on. The role needs a less stereotypical bully and a more compelling actor. Diane Lane is lovely. Kevin Bacon is not quite that commanding father figure. Luke Wilson doesn't really fit the star ballplayer type. Also I would have liked Dink play Waldo Grace in a game. I thought the movie was hinting in that direction but the race card seems to be played half-heartedly.

I've seen "My Dog Skip" twice in my life and those two viewings are separated by an entire decade. The first time I saw it was in the spring of 2000, a little less than a year after I had gotten my dog. Seeing that movie as an eight-year-old really moved me and developed an extreme appreciation for the friend that I had and still have in Copper, that little, spunky tail-wagger. By the end of the movie, I was in tears. Now, having seen the movie again for the first time in ten years, my reaction was the same. Yes, there are a handful of movies that can succeed in bringing tears to my eyes. "Schindler's List" and "Vertigo" are two of them. "My Dog Skip" is another.This picture could be considered the "Old Yeller" of contemporary times. It's sweet, it's simplistic, its sentimental, and its honest. The true story of Willie Morris, who grew up in the 1940s as a painfully shy boy whose best friend was the local baseball hero who lived next door. When his friend was drafted into World War II, Willie was alone in the world until his mother went against his father's wishes and bought him a terrier for his birthday. That moment was the turning point in Willie Morris's life.The movie "My Dog Skip" is a beautiful dramatization of an entirely involving story. I don't know if the touch about the moonshiners has any factual basis (or for that matter, if anybody in the audience can identify with that) but every element about the boy and his dog is absolutely heart-breaking. Now I am a sucker for movies like this, but I don't think you have to be a sentimental as me to get involved here. As Richard Roeper so eloquently put it on Ebert & Roeper, "only a heartless curmudgeon - the type of person who would kick a puppy" could not be moved by this. The movie tackles all the important elements of the relationship between a boy and his dog: loyalty, responsibility, love, etc. But it also crosses over into subjects that are seldom explored. Darker moments like what happens when the boy has a few other friends but happy go-lucky Skip really wants to play fetch? It also touches realistically upon (and I can back this up from personal experience) the pains of being alone and tormented by others and how having just one friend - just one friend - can change everything.What I also adored about the movie was the way the supporting roles were handled. Kevin Bacon and Diane Lane are not only in fine form as the boy's parents, but they are given very naturalistic and humanlike characters to play. The father's initial reluctance to allowing his boy to take on the responsibility of pet - and having some of his fears come true - was a great touch, but the movie does not make the foolish mistake of over-blowing it to the point where we'd dislike the father. We see his concerns and his wise outlook on the world, and watch him as he sort of softens up along the way. And his mother is completely open to any solution that can help their kid along. These are two people who deeply love each other and deeply love their child and want to see the best for him.Maybe the subplot with the obligatory puppy-kicking curmudgeons (this time moonshiners working in a cemetery) has some factual basis (I've never read Willie Morris's autobiography, so I can't be sure) but it was the least interesting and most mechanical element in the movie and it seemed, until a crucial point, to sort of stop the picture. However, since it is so minor and so dismissible until a certain point, it does not really interfere in the enjoyment of the movie. And again, I must be honest that by the end of the picture (now an adult) I was balling like a little boy. And, still an adult, as soon as it was done, I got out of bed, walked over into the next room where Copper was sleeping and hugged him passionately. The poor dog. He was probably wondering why he had been woken up at one in the morning after several hours of peaceful slumber, but it was sort of necessary at the time.That's what makes movies like "My Dog Skip" so great. It's not one of those pictures that essentially gets down on its knees and begs you to like it and to be moved. You really have no choice but to be moved. Not unless you never owned a dog or a pet of any kind. Seeing the movie again for the first time in ten years reassured my respect for my own dog and thankfulness that having him as a loyal friend changed the course of my life.

Willie Morris, an American author and Harpers Magazine editor, died in 1999, the same year this film was released. The film was dedicated to him. It seems therefore that he did not live to see it, despite it being based on the book he wrote about his childhood memories with his dog Skip. Morris (1934-1999) came from Jackson, Mississippi, and wrote two books of childhood memoirs, MY DOG SKIP and GOOD OLD BOY: A DELTA BOYHOOD. The 'Delta' referred to is the Mississippi Delta, a region made internationally famous by the classic novel by Eudora Welty, DELTA WEDDING, which is one of the greatest works of fiction ever to come out of the American Deep South. The film itself is transposed to Yazoo, Mississippi, for some reason, and some characters are changed or invented. The main theme of this story is of a lonely boy whose best friend becomes his dog. But it is interwoven with many simultaneous adult and childhood events and tragedies, so that a rich texture of life in the town is evoked and portrayed. It is very true to the pattern of small Southern towns as they used to be, with a boy's dog becoming a well-known member of the community who could be greeted heartily on the street as he trotted along. In this film, perfectly accurately, we see townspeople greeting Skip as he passes them, or saying: 'There goes Willie's dog Skip,' as if they were speaking of a person. There is one hilarious scene where Willie and his mother put Skip at the wheel of their car and the mother drives the car down Main Street while lying out of sight on the seat, so that everyone gasps with astonishment at the sight of seeing a terrier drive a car. Skip keeps his eyes on the road and the wheel and does not look to right nor left. Such things were common occurrences in such towns back in those days, and right up until the 1960s. After that, the small towns all over America were gutted by shopping malls, spreading suburban blight, and above all by the interstate highway system. All the small communities were destroyed overnight, and so stories like this one are now of archaeological interest. I grew up in a small Southern town and my dog, who was my best friend, was known by most of the people in the town and greeted in the street as if she were a person, exactly as shown in this film. Furthermore, my adult friend Sarah V. Thacker used to drive up and down Main Street with her pet pig sitting up on the front seat beside her. All of these things are absolutely what happened back then, but are as inconceivable now as if 1000 years had passed rather than just 50 years. Being a child when there was no meaningful TV, no internet, no cell phones, in an isolated small town full of colourful characters, and where you could wander round at any time of day or night with your dog, where no one ever locked his house or his car and not a single burglary or theft had occurred in more than 100 years, was in many ways delightful. All the nostalgia for such small town life is justified. I say that for the younger people who have never experienced it and cannot possibly imagine it. It was also a time before drugs, and before the mass commercialization of sex. In fact, it was quite literally a time of innocence. There were no murders, no rapes, no muggings, no burglaries, no car thefts, no school shootings, no drug addicts, and no one ever worried about a little child wandering around the town at any hour because nothing could possibly happen to him other than maybe tripping in the dark and hurting his knee. This vanished world, set in the 1940s and hence before my own time, is miraculously recreated in this film. The casting is superb. The little boy Frankie Muniz plays Willie Morris with perfect charm, and is just right. Luke Wilson is excellent as the student sports hero Dink Jenkins who lives next door. (My student sports hero was named Kermit Lance (who alas died young), who treated me with the same gentle and friendly consideration shown here by Dink.) Kevin Bacon is excellent as the tormented father who has lost his leg in battle, and Diane Lane is just as good as his mother. Caitlin Wachs is perfect as 'the prettiest little girl in town' who becomes sweet on Willie. The other kids are excellent. There are some excellent performances by the minor characters who, being black, are relegated to the background of the story because they lived in a different part of town in those days of racial segregation. One is the young actor Nathaniel Lee Jr. Another whose name I don't know played the man who worked in the grocery store and gave slices of 'baloney' to Skip. The black inhabitants of the small Southern towns were important figures in its composition in those days, but were as confined to their social circles in their private lives as many of the immigrant Hispanics and Muslims are today. The segregation was not entirely forced, for there is always a tendency for any minority to prefer a ghettoized social life, as we see today more than ever. At one point in the film we see a film being screened and catch a glimpse of the black children being confined to the balcony while the white children sit in the stalls below. In another scene we see the black people filing up the fire escape stairs at the side of the cinema to enter the balcony. These segregation details are not highlighted in the film at all, but are there for the sake of social accuracy. How well I remember the ridiculous four rest rooms in every bus station!

"My Dog Skip" is pretty feisty. Although Hollywood has hyperbolized this autobiographical account of late author Willie Morris' youth in Yazoo City in the summer of 1942 and the canine who changed his life, "My Dog Skip" measures up as an endearing, tail-wagging, Alpo epic aimed more at nostalgia-minded adults than adolescents. This pretentious but picturesque parable about a pooch (albeit one with more pedigree than most) and his famous young master strives for the poignancy of "To Kill A Mockingbird: but lacks the complexity of the Harper Lee classic. "Mockingbird" explored racism, while "Skip" only nods at it. Nevertheless, sophomore director Jay Russell has freshman scribe Gail Gilchriest have spun a superficial but entertaining saga about a boy and his dog that quenches your emotions without insulting your intelligence.Life for nine-year old Willie Morris (Frankie Muniz of TV's "Malcolm in the Middle") is no picnic. Not only is Willie small for his age, but he also doesn't fit in with everybody else. Being different at his age poses huge problems. Willie prefers reading rather than romping around with a football, so the school bullies regularly prey on him. They corner him after class, knock his books out of his arms, rip up a letter,and call him names. Willie's next door neighbor, Dink Jenkins (Luke Wilson of "Home Fries"),the most celebrated jock in Yazoo City, becomes his friend. The bullies cannot understand why Dink pays Willie any attention. When Dink enlists in the U.S. Army for duty overseas in Europe, Willie is saddened because he is losing his only friend. Although his father loves him, Jake Morris (Kevin Bacon of "Sleepers") is so embittered by the loss of a leg in the Spanish Civil War that he doesn't give Willie much room to frolic. Ironically, Jack tries to shield Willie from the pain of life as he struggles to deal with his own loss. Meanwhile, Willie's resourceful mom, Ellen (Diane Lane of "Untraceable"), awakens the Tom Sawyer in her son. She gives Willie a puppy for his ninth birthday. Jack hates the idea. "Dogs are just a heartbreak waiting to happen," he insists. Willie's heart will break, he fears, if anything tragic happens to the animal. Despite Jack's objections, Ellen puts her foot down. Willie gets to keep the puppy! Skip becomes Willie's best friend. Willie's circle of friends widens. Eventually, the school bullies accept him, especially after Willie spends a stormy night in a spooky graveyard without turning chickening out. This is where Skip and Willie run afoul of two scummy bootleggers. Skip acts as matchmaker, too. He arranges Willie's first date with sweet little Rivers Applewhite(Caitlin Wachs of "Thirteen Days"). They go to a movie and share popcorn with Skip. As Willie's confidence swells, he takes Skip for granted. At a baseball field, where Willie is playing finally instead of watching, Skip delays the game. An enraged Willie clobbers him, and Skip skedaddles. Later, pair of villainous bootleggers traps Skip, beat him with a shovel, and leave him for dead."My Dog Skip" unfolds as a fairly ordinary sequence of vignettes which feature either Willie undergoing his rites of passage or the mischievous Skip in an adventure of his own. For example, when Jack and Skip are collecting blackberries, they cross paths with a couple of hunters. Willie watches as a deer dies from a rifle shot. He touches the blood with his fingers and examines the blood as the animal takes its dying gasps of air. Russell and Gilchriest have taken a formulaic plot and embroidered it with several ironic lessons about life. Luke Wilson's ill-fated jock, Dink Jenkins, serves as a contrivance to show that not all cowards are alike, especially when they hail from championship stock.Frankie Muniz refuses to be upstaged by the six adorable Jack Russell terriers alternating in the lead role. Two of them, Moose and Enzo, appear on NBC-TV's "Frasier." Luke ("Blue Streak") Wilson rounds out a sympathetic cast as Willie's next door neighbor who fights the Nazis and experiences the horrors of combat and the shame of cowardice. Ken Bacon brings surprising depth and compassion to what essentially constitutes a cameo as Willie's wounded father. Jack Morris displays a dour Hemingway quality. Although he won a medal for losing his leg in the war, Jack assures Willie,"I'd rather have the leg." Only kids that have not been weaned on Ritalin, PlayStation, and MTV will appreciate this tear-jerking tale about a terrier with its refreshingly authentic depiction of rural Mississippi. "My Dog Skip" shuns the slobbering slapstick of "Beethoven" for the heartfelt sincerity of "Old Yeller." Above all, despite his scene-stealing antics, Skip balks at performing far-fetched feats of the Rin-Tin-Tin variety! Willie Morris saw "My Dog Skip" three days before he died of a heart attack at age 64 and gave the movie his blessing.