My Dog Skip

Released 1999
Stars Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Kevin Bacon
Directed by Jay Russell

Don't trust any critic who writes about "My Dog Skip" without remembering his childhood dog. My dog was named Blackie. He was part cocker, part beagle, and he was my friend. The sweet thing about "My Dog Skip" is the way it understands the friendship between a kid and a dog. Dogs accomplish amazing things in the movies, but the best thing Skip does is look up at his master, eager to find out what they're gonna do next.

The movie is much elaborated from a memoir by Willie Morris, who grew up in Yazoo, on the Mississippi Delta, and went on to become the editor of Harper's magazine. Not everything in the movie actually happened. Its embroideries remind me of Huck Finn's comment about Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer: "He told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

The movie is set in the summer of 1942. Willie is a lonely child. He's no good at sports, he doesn't make friends easily, and he has a standoffish relationship with his dad (Kevin Bacon), who lost a leg in the Spanish Civil War, "and a piece of his heart." Mom decides Willie needs a dog. Dad is against it. "He needs a friend," Mom says, snatching the cigar out of Dad's mouth and puffing on it her herself, as a Freudian signal of her takeover. She gives the dog to Willie, and Willie's life is changed forever. With Skip, he runs all over town, and the fields outside town, and other kids want to be his friend because he has a dog.

A movie like this falls outside ordinary critical language. Is it good or bad? Is there too much melodrama? I don't have any idea. It triggered too many thoughts of my own for me to have much attention left over for footnotes. I realize, for example, that the movie doesn't deal in any substantial way with the racial situation in Mississippi in 1942, and I know that Willie's dad undergoes a rather miraculous transformation, and that Dink seems less like a neighbor than like a symbol of lost innocence. I know those things, but they don't seem relevant to the actual experience of this movie. If there was ever a day or even a minute when your dog was not your best but your only friend, you'll see what I mean.

Summary by Roger Ebert

This is an unabashedly sentimental story, and it works. I'm a sucker for pretty much any movie that forlornly remembers youth, and this is no exception. What's even better is it's suitable for adults and kids of all ages. I watched it with my wife and two kids (5 and 7), and we all enjoyed it. There are a few bad words from one of the young punks who bully Willie, but they're pretty minor. I like Frankie Muniz, and he gives a good performance here. I think he'll have a good career as a child actor, and he may be one of the few who are able to break through as an adult. "My Dog Skip" is not a great film, but it's a good one. --Bill Alward, March 2, 2002