Movie Thoughts: Benji (1974)

 

• Released: May 31, 1974
  
• Directed by: Joe Camp
  
• Running time: 1 h 26 min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

A beloved stray dog has to find a way to rescue the two children who want to adopt him when they get held hostage by criminals.

My Thoughts

Benji is one of these movies where I honestly have no idea if I've seen it before. As a kid I watched a lot of those 70s/80s/90s live action dog movies geared towards children, and I especially remember my babysitter when I was like five or six years old allowing me to borrow her entire collection of movies of this genre, including movies such as Zeus and Roxanne, Air Bud and Shiloh. I think the original Benji (or one of the other older movies) was among them as well, but with how long ago it is I honestly have no clue. This movie just feels vaguely familiar to me, but that could also just be because of the similar tropes this genre of dog movie often falls into, or the fact that I did recently watch the 2018 reboot movie.

Either way, this movie...is not very good. It's not bad, it's mostly just inoffensive. Standard wholesome dog movie shit. The stakes never feel very high (despite kidnapped children definitely should feel like high stakes), the dogs are cute, it's a basic story, etc. I don't like this movie a lot, but I don't really dislike it either. It's perfectly suitable to put on if you want to show your children something to keep them quiet for one and a half hours, but nothing more. It's just...generic.

The only things I really find to be of note in the movie are the soundtrack (or lack thereof). The soundtrack in this movie is rather limited, making the music feel very repetitive and sometimes downright unfitting for the scenes. And with the limited amount of soundtrack used, there's also sometimes scenes where there'll be no background music playing at all, sometimes for several minutes. I'm not saying that with competence silent scenes in a movie can't be effective, but in this movie it just felt lacking and like the lack of music took away from the tension. 

For example, there's barely any music playing in a (rather long) scene where Benji gets locked inside a school while trying to get help for the kids. This is a time sensitive situation and no matter where he goes in the school people end up accidentally not noticing him or locking a door in front of him. This scene goes on for several minutes and is definitely one where some tension-building music would be appropriate. Benji is spending precious moments locked inside here when he wants to get help for the kids who are in a dangerous and time-sensitive situation. But instead the scene is mostly devoid of music, so basically we just get a dog walking around an empty school building in silence, completely taking away the tension of the scene and instead making it almost boring to watch. Just a little bit of a subtle soundtrack to build tension could've added so much here. And this is just one example.

Also this is just a minor thing but the child acting in this is not good. An issue the 2018 Benji reboot also had, funnily enough.

So overall this isn't a bad or good movie, just perfectly serviceable. I'm sure there'll be better Benji movies later down the line since there's a lot of them, but for a first installment this isn't very good. Not bad or offensive, just a perfectly solid "meh".