What a waste of my time!!!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

One of my all time favorites.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This would be a strange one to watch with the sound turned down. Much of it would consist of two dogs or a dog and a cat staring disinterestedly at each other for half-a-minute at a time. With sound it's a little more entertaining, although in this age of computer games it would probably struggle to keep even younger kids entertained for long. The story is essentially a remake of the original with the action transplanted to the city of San Francisco. Our heroes go through a number of mildly diverting adventures before making their way home. There's a pair of dastardly dog catchers – has, I wonder, any film been made in the history of cinema that featured a non-dastardly dog-catcher? I don't know, perhaps in a country where rabies is rife. The dog-catchers give the kids someone to hiss at, but there's nothing particularly threatening about them. Each of the animals involved has a voice, although this being the olden days of the mid-1990s, the cheap technology required to give the illusion that their mouths are actually moving obviously didn't exist, so we have to assume all animals are telepathic, I suppose. The voices, other than Ralph Waite as the older dog, don't really suit. Had I been in charge of the voices I'd have given each the voice of a famous old movie star. It would have kept me entertained.

This is the sequel to the 1993 family adventure film, "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey". In my review of that film, I talked about my experience seeing most of it probably not long after its video release in 1993. "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco" must have been new (or fairly new) to the VHS format when I saw it for the first time in 1996. I was around ten years old when that happened, and can't remember much from my first viewing, but I do remember liking the film. After finally watching its predecessor from start to finish earlier this week, leaving me with mixed feelings, I watched this 1996 sequel for the first time in nearly fourteen years, and this time, I basically thought it was average.Chance, Shadow, and Sassy are still living with the same family, but the troublemaking Chance isn't sure if his young owner, Jamie Seaver, wants him around anymore. The family decides to go on a trip to Canada and take the pets with them. However, at the airport in San Francisco, when the three animals are in carriers about to be put in the cargo hold of the plane, Chance panics and the three of them escape! The plane takes of with the humans on board, who don't know that they are leaving their pets behind. The naïve young Bulldog, wise old Golden Retriever, and arrogant Himalayan cat find themselves lost again, this time not in the wilderness, but on the streets of San Francisco! While walking through the city, they meet many stray dogs, some good and some bad, and Chance even falls in love with one of the good ones, a Kuvasz named Delilah. The animals have to try and stay away from two cruel dogcatchers who drive around in search of dogs to capture and take to a laboratory! One thing that is meant for laughs in the first "Homeward Bound" film is the rivalry between Chance and Sassy, which continues here, and unfortunately, it's not that funny in either film. I once again didn't usually find either of these two characters funny, and was once again not that impressed with the voice-overs provided by Michael J. Fox and Sally Field. Just like in the first film, the humour in this sequel rarely works. There were times when I smiled, and I couldn't help but laugh a little when Chance runs off with a baseball player's catcher's mitt near the beginning, but this was not enough, and most of the dogs introduced in this sequel don't tend to help much. When I recently watched "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey", I found that it was dull for a while but then improved when the big adventure began. However, while watching this sequel, I found that it basically continued to be dull when the adventure began, and stayed this way for most of the film. The adventure of the three pets here takes place in a very different setting, and we don't get the nice scenery. There is SOME suspense here, especially towards the end, but definitely less than there is in the 1993 release. I almost forgot to mention that the dog romance here also wasn't done do well, and it's something the original "Homeward Bound" doesn't have.Since I only found "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" to be barely above average when I saw it this month, I may not have ended up watching this unsurprisingly inferior sequel if I had never seen it before, but since I had previously seen "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco" and remembered thinking it was good (better than the original at the time), I intended to watch it again and review it. Well, some movies one enjoys in their childhood can still be entertaining in adulthood, and some of them can't, and for me, this is one of the latter. I first watched it around the same time I first watched "Jumanji", and I've seen that film again twice in the past few years and it hasn't disappointed me, but that didn't turn out to be the case with this "Homeward Bound" sequel. It seems to be considerably less popular than its predecessor, as sequels often are, and even though I'm certainly not as big a fan of the 1993 film as many clearly are, I think I can understand why, at least somewhat. If they were to make another "Homeward Bound" movie, I highly doubt I would bother watching it.

SPOILER WARNINGThe original Homeward Bound story is a fascinating story of wide panoramic settings, a strong bond between the three animals, Shadow, Sassy and Chance and a pledge with one another to walk home to San Francisco despite the miles and miles of dangerous wilderness between them. The three main characters are well rounded, interesting, and you care about them so much that the human characters seem somewhat less relevant (though not entirely because they serve as motivation for the characters to when they will return home).This however, is not.We're at a point where the family is preparing to go camping in Canada, but after a paranoid Chance cocks things up by thinking he's being abandoned, the animals stupidly run away from the airport and find themselves down the back streets of San Francisco.The animals seem to meander around the city mindlessly, dodging two very thick men working for illegal testing labs and two incredibly irritating strays (one of whom dubiously has a voice uncannily similar to Mike Tyson), team up with a gang of other misanthrope strays now and again (even more insufferable with some of the awful garbagy lines spouted out), and in general, the film doesn't seem to know what to do with itself, because as we all know, since these animals successfully navigated an entire wilderness for miles and miles last time, a city would be pretty small potatoes! We even fill the gap by having a bit where a kid is saved from a burning house! Any minute, I would expect Rin-Tin-Tin to come up with his attorney with a cease-and-desist note and threats of suing for copyright (and to be honest, I wouldn't blame him)! It is so bone-idle, that it in fact levers in a cheesy romance plot between Chance and a stray called Delilah! What were the writing team thinking when they cooked this up? My only conclusion: They're all raving lunatics! We don't need a stupid romantic sub-plot levered into these films, it's totally superfluous! To make this story aggravatingly boneheaded, we even have a love rival by the way of another irritating redneck-drawling stray dog with the brains of a kipper! (For some reason, they use a Grand-Bleu De Gascogne for this, sadly a very rare dog, which would smack of doggie racism, unless it perhaps indicates that the writers hate the French and the rednecks.) I also wonder why Chance still behaves like a terminally-naive puppy despite his last experiences in the wilderness which would surely have taught him a thing or two! Not forgetting, in the first film, Chance explained that before he was adopted he was a stray dog, and was abandoned when still a puppy, so he'd know a little about living on the streets don't you think? The conclusion that wraps up the film's stories is cringe worthy to the point of wanting to put your foot through the telly! I won't reveal it, but if you look at the rest of the film, a climax of this film will not be worth the case it is carried in! Stick to Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. At least that way you can pretend that this Godawful mess never existed and enjoy the better original. Watching this sequel may result in you hurling yourself in front of a freight train! You have been warned!

Lacking the beauty, charm and teamwork of the original film (the remake) this sequel makes up in adventure and romance! This one is probably slightly funnier, with another good adventure and almost as much proof as the last one that dogs really are man's best friend.However, this sequel has its flaws, as in things about the film that don't completely make sense if you have watched the first film. For example, in the first film Chance learnt how to be a faithful and kind dog to Jamie, but in this it seem's he's even sillier. Another one of these flaws is that he explains in the first film that he lived on the streets and now Shadow is talking about how he can't live on the streets and he doesn't know how to. WHAT!? Otherwise, an incredibly good sequel, with romance, adventure and charm, but just doesn't have the emotion that made the original film so special and captivating.Chance's, Sassy's and Shadow's owners are going on a camping trip and taking the dogs with them. However, Chance, like in the last film, becomes incredibly confused with the situation and escapes out of his dog box before all three of them are loaded onto the plane. That means they are lost in San Francisco, while the humans go off without them! What can they do?Recommended to people who liked the first film, people who were disappointed that there was no romance in the first film and just people who like dogs!Enjoy "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco"!