SnoopyStyle It's 1942 Yazoo City, Mississippi. Will Morris (Frankie Muniz) is a runt picked on by 3 bullies. His only friend is next door neighbor and local high school ball star Dink Jenkins (Luke Wilson). Dink goes off to war right before his ninth birthday. His father Jack (Kevin Bacon) is home with a war injury. His mother Ellen (Diane Lane) gets him a Jack Russell terrier but his father refuses to let him keep it. He wants to shelter him from the inevitable lost but she won't let it stand. Little girl Rivers Applewhite likes Will and his dog Skip. He befriends a colored boy who tells him that he's never heard of Dink but Waldo Grace is the best ballplayer. Dink sends him a German helmet and ammo belt. Will brings them in for show-and-tell and he is terribly picked on. The bullies dare him to spend the night in the cemetery to join the group. He and Skip battle moonshiners, stays all night and ends up joining the gang. Dink returns from the war haunted. Will is doing horribly at a baseball game and hits Skip. Skip runs away and gets into trouble with the moonshiners.This is generally a touching kid with dog movie. There are some rough patches and trying to fit in too much. The story probably could use a lot of trimming. It's based on Willie Morris' autobiographical book and meanders like real life. Some of it plays falsely like the rough looking moonshiners. The narration is unnecessary and a more simple narrative would be a vast improvement.Frankie Muniz is a good child actor. The bully is trying too hard to be a bully especially if he's suppose to become friendlier later on. The role needs a less stereotypical bully and a more compelling actor. Diane Lane is lovely. Kevin Bacon is not quite that commanding father figure. Luke Wilson doesn't really fit the star ballplayer type. Also I would have liked Dink play Waldo Grace in a game. I thought the movie was hinting in that direction but the race card seems to be played half-heartedly.

Fatal_When_Swallowed I caught this on WGN and wound up watching it because out of 300+ channels on cable, there was nothing else worth watching. My first impression was formed by the syrupy background music that played almost continuously throughout the film. If it had lyrics, they would be, "Open up some Kleenex and just cry, cry, cry." I cried, all right, but for the wrong reasons. Any film that involves the use of animals inevitably includes harming said animals, and My Dog Skip was no exception. From the graphic hunting death of a deer to the verbal/physical abuse of the dog, this project could not have been pleasant for the title character, who out-acted all his human counterparts. Keep in mind the fact that movies are only fictional where people are concerned. Animals only experience it as real-life mistreatment that they cannot comprehend.The plot can be summarized in two words: Who cares? It's a coming-of-age tale about a boy named Willie and his terrier Skip in small-town 1940s Mississippi. Willie has growing pains. He has to contend with a stern father, the town bullies, his complete inability to play baseball, an inexplicable, mostly one-sided friendship with a WWII veteran who is painted as the town pariah, and a first love named Rivers, to whom we never find out what happens. Most of the characters are completely forgettable, and the narrative consists of loosely-pasted vignettes of a dreary childhood. I only saw this movie last night, and I don't remember much of anything except being surprised to learn that, in the c. 1945 South, white families could watch young black men playing baseball after dark. (Read Maya Angelou if you don't understand what I'm saying here.) A violent scene leaves the viewer feeling lousy, after which the story just peters out. We see Willie rowing his girlfriend on a pond--probably an allusion to his Rhodes scholarship, which requires athletic ability--and then he suddenly grows up and blows town, leaving the aging Skip all by himself. If the film's hypocritical concluding drivel doesn't make you want to throw up, then nothing ever can. Comparatively speaking, Old Yeller was more cherished than ol' Skip.I don't recommend this film to animal lovers of any age, particularly children, because they won't understand its conclusion. I'm not even sure that I do, if for no other reason than to wonder how in the hell a dimwit like Willie ever made it into Oxford.

jrmpc21 I just finished LISTENING to this movie at 4 a.m. today, broadcast 10 years after it was made and while I was unable to sleep. Skip, the story about a boy and his dog, was hauntingly narrated by Harry Connick, Jr. Between Connick's emotional reading and the sparse dialogue contained in each scene, a picture was painted that did not require a viewing in order to truly move its audience to actually feel what was happening on that screen.The story takes place during a simpler time (the South in the early 40's) but presents conflicts among family and among neighbors due, in large measure, to the smoldering anger and fear that a raging world war can summon. It also deals with universal truths as to right and wrong, as well as the characters' clear, but simplistic belief systems and the respect folks had about how a family should be raised. This device made the movie both poignant and, perhaps 'unrelate-able' to today's younger audience.Connick brings a lilt to the words he speaks in narrating this film, not unlike his delivery of a song. He deserves much of the credit for the beauty of the film. The cast was excellent, but knew best when to just step aside and let the relationship between a boy (Frankie Munez) and his dog do the talking.Bravo! JRM'

wohoman2005 Hello Everyone, I Remember watching this movie with my kids, I cried then, even more then they did. and just saw it on HBO and, just started balling all over again, it takes me back to being a kid and my dogs that went everywhere i went. the female was so spoiled very fufu, were the male was just like WHATEVER DUDE,Also of my parents, mostly my Father, he was in WWII, A nose gunner in a B-24 fighting the Japanese, as I look back and the story's he told about being a kid also the old homes, my parents were from Worcester Mass, this movie really moved me. I highly recommend this movie to anyone!, even the old tough guys who never cry, because that was ME.