A Major Disappointment

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

WAR DOGS is a nice little picture for the dog lovers among us. It was made as an American war propaganda effort in 1942 and used to highlight the importance of dogs in the war effort in order to fight the enemy in various ways as well as fulfilling useful behind-the-lines roles. The dog in this film is a lovable and very well-trained German Shepherd who doesn't actually go to war, but instead helps to hinder the efforts of a saboteur gang.The thriller aspects of the story only really come into it at the climax and for most of the running time this is a sentimental drama. The main character is a kid who's too young to enlist so sends his dog instead. There's little more to it than that, but animal lovers will be delighted by the number of lovable canines on display here.

Every breed of large family dog seems to be utilized in this propaganda film that shows how man's best friend helps them stop man's worst enemy. It starts off alright, with young Billy Lee being tried in juvenile court for stealing and ultimately donates his beloved German Shepherd to war service. The training sequences may shock or anger the excessive animal activists, today being an era when elephants are removed from circuses and fights to remove horse drawn carriages from central park are still being argued over. The dogs here are trained to become vicious through exposures to loud noises including fire crackers, lit sticks of dynamite and even gun shots at their paws. Ace the Wonder Dog was obviously trained and his affections for Billy Lee seem real. There's a soap opera subplot involving Lee's drunken father, kindly judge Bradley Page's attempts to find him work, and the usually villainous Page getting a romance with kindly social worker Kay Linaker. Toss in obvious enemies of the state tossed in as espionage experts, and you've got familiar war propaganda of the most obvious kind. It's certainly filled with interesting moments and some surprising performances, but it is one of thousands of similar films that took similar plot paths and end up being formula.

Even by Monogram Studios standards, this is a pretty bad film. Some of the problem is the acting, some the very schmaltzy writing and some is just the overuse of stock footage which made this fictionalized story seem more like a dull documentary. Regardless, it's tough to love this film.The film begins with a god-awful scene where a little boy is taken to court for allegedly stealing. The second the know-it-all self-appointed social worker entered the scene, I hated her--as she was nothing but platitudes and seemed one-dimensional. Because the boy is so gosh-darn lovable, the juvenile court judge and this social worker take a liking to him and seem to give up all other work they have just to hang out with the boy and his father who suffers from undiagnosed PTSD from WWI. Eventually, the trio hit on the crazy idea of donating the boy's dog to help the war effort (though considering it was a German shepherd, I am not sure how bright that idea was). Eventually, due to the good judge, the swell social worker, the gosh-darn cute kid and the German wonder-dog, they manage to get Dad off the booze and give him self-respect....until he is almost immediately killed (oops). Then, because the kid is so swell, the judge decides to marry the social worker and adopt the kid!! In between, there is lots of footage of dogs in training and some decent scenes depicting Dad's flashbacks (one of the first films to really address this in vets).The bottom line is that aside from talking about a seldom discussed aspect of WWII (the dogs), the film is full of clichés, is very predictable, never seems real and is generally annoying and dumb. I did not like this film.