Movie Thoughts: Curly: The Littlest Puppy (1995)

• Released: August 9th, 1995
• Directed by: Toshiyuki Hiruma, Takashi Masunaga
• Running time: 47min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A girl named Haley is sent to live at her strict aunt's place. Her aunt breeds Afghan hounds, but due to circumstances a husky mutt ends up in the aunt's house. Haley vows to take care of the puppy, whom she names Curly, much to aunt Judith's chagrin. 

My Thoughts

I was in the mood for a shorter, light-hearted movie, and this fit the bill. Is it good? Nah. But it was something.

It does feel really cheap, with lazy animation and not-so-great character designs, but it's also not the worst movie of this type that I've seen. 

The story is equally generic, but what honestly bothered me more is how absolutely cookie-cutter these characters are. Haley is literally just "girl". She doesn't have a personality, she doesn't really have flaws or quicks. She's just every nice do-gooding child protagonist you can think of. Judith is equally one note and her last-minute redemption feels unearned after she's been neglecting and exploiting Haley throughout most of the movie.

Curly himself is also a blank slate of a character. He doesn't talk (though some of the animals in this movie do talk? It's very confusing why Curly never talks), and they didn't give him much of a personality other than just "nice" similar to Haley. I kinda wish that our title character had more going on. Even without having him talk, you can still at least establish a personality for your canine protagonist. But they just didn't. Curly is just a generic nice dog, the same way Haley is a generic nice kid. 

The voice acting also was nothing to write home about, as was the music. I also hated the two parent characters in this movie, being so selfish as to ship their many kids off to other relatives without even checking how those relatives are treating their children. Haley was being borderline abused by her aunt all this time and they seemingly couldn't care less, or at least didn't do enough diligence to check up on her.

So yeah, not a good movie. Skip it, even if you like dogs there's not much for you here.

On a side note, I also hated the rat's character design. Why did it have a Hitler mustache?