Max 2: White House Hero

Well aware you can’t hear it, I’m sighing deeply right now.  And I watched this damn movie yesterday.  The sighing won’t stop.

So, y’all remember Max from a couple years ago?  ‘Twas the story of a Belgian malinois who, after developing canine PTSD in Afghanistan, came home to the States to live with his late owner’s family.  There, he learned love and togetherness, teaching the same to his late owner’s younger brother.  Plus some crime-stopping shenanigans, naturally.  Not a bad movie at all, really, just kinda par.  Made for a nice outing with the family, especially since our little guy, River, is himself a malinois.  (Granted, River was a bit of a tubby example of the breed, especially when compared to the lithe and athletic Max, but he wasn’t there, so he couldn’t feel the obviously inherent shame.  Lucky dog.)

Then I saw recently there was a sequel.  With the surtitle White House Hero.  And the cover looked atrocious.

Just look at that: happy-looking dog, focus on the kids in the background, no sense of drama.  The hell is this, now?  So I look it up, assuming our old pals Universal 1440 were behind this madness, but Max wasn’t a Universal property, but rather belonged to Warner Bros. (via MGM and Orion).  Okey-dokey.  I mean, I was gonna watch it either way, but at least if this was a 1440 joint I’d know what kind of terrible sequel shovelware I was getting into.

So what’s this thing about, hm?  Well, apparently the family from the original has loaned Max out to the Secret Service.  (And that’s the only mention of any character from the original.  In fact, no member of the cast or crew, human or otherwise, from the original Max was involved with this production.  Fantastic.)  Why?  He’s gonna help out with an impending visit by the Russian president, the usual canine unit on maternity leave.  (Funny note:  In the IMDb synopsis, the usual Secret Service dog is named Butch, but the movie actually names her Charlie.  It’s in the first, like, ten minutes or so of the film, how did they miss that?  They sound nothing alike!)  Instead of doing his job, though, Max befriends the American president’s young son, and adventurous shenanigans ensue.

So, yeah, this thing is pure tripe.  The best acting comes from background characters, and that’s only a relative assessment.  The story barely exists, centering on the old-hat “I’m the kid of someone famous (often the president), I didn’t ask for any of this privilege, I wanna be a normal kid!” bullshit, hearkening back to ’90s throwaways like Richie Rich and First Kid.  But at least those films had some talent behind them, like Macaulay Culkin and Sinbad, unlike this talentless pile of nothing.  Hell, the supposedly highly-trained Max is allowed to be treated as a pet, something a real service dog wouldn’t suffer (nor would the real Secret Service, for that matter).  The Russians are walking stereotypes (did you know the only thing Russian people eat is borscht?), everyone is literally flailingly inept, and every single person in the audience, regardless of age, is spoken down to.  Joy.

There should be no surprise, given the man behind the camera was none other than Brian Levant.  Don’t know the name?  Well, he was responsible for several ’90s-and-beyond high-concept traysh heaps: Problem Child 2, Beethoven, The Flintstones (and its needless prequel Viva Rock Vegas), Snow Dogs, Jingle All the Way, Are We There Yet?, Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins (as though that series needed a fucking prequel!), The Spy Next Door (Jackie Chan, why!?), and, worst of all, A Christmas Story 2.  Hell, he even helmed 21 episodes of the ’80s revival of Leave It to Beaver in its waning days, a series even my Beaver-loving parents thought was grimace-inducingly terrible.  Writer Steven Altiere is similarly blighted, penning such classics as the aforementioned Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins, Dr. Dolittle: Million Dollar Mutts (AKA the third and most unnecessary of the sequels in that inexplicable franchise), Beethoven’s Christmas Adventure (AKA the sixth sequel in that franchise, which is somehow not the last one, and the first in which the titular dog speaks), and Norm of the North.  Glorious.  You can imagine the writing involved.

Basically, this is an in-name-only sequel that not only has none of the heart or skill of the original, but actually serves as a detriment to the audience.  Made in the style of for-kids family films, no character makes sense, whiny-ass privileged children are glorified as martyrs, adults are without-exception dumb, the dog is superhuman, the world is actually just mostly blue-screen nonsense, and everyone is dumber for having sat through it.  I know I was.  Shit, even First Kid, a similarly-focused kids flick about the president’s son wanting a normal life, had, like, messages attached.  This thing just kinda promotes recklessness and stupidity, not to mention whining and entitlement.

I honestly hope this loses money, though that’s likely to be hard, given the low quality of the production.  These types of movies give actual family films a bad name.  This is why kids can’t have nice things, because adults (parents included) think so lowly of them.  And greed is still a thing.  Sorry, kids, some of us will try to make things better for you.  Here’s hoping Pixar can lend a hand…