Beverly Hills Chihuahua/How to Lose Friends and Influence People: Movie Reviews (2008)

In addition to the week’s most recommended new release, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” two other movies opened in area theaters this week, and here’s what they have in common. Each is about as satisfying as one of those mystery grab bags offered at certain ice cream shops. Look inside, and what you find isn’t a welcome surprise, but a cold disappointment.

That certainly is true for the week’s No. 1 box office release, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” which made an astonishing $29 million, and which now confirms that Leona Helmsley’s dog, Trouble, indeed got screwed by being willed only $12 million from the Helmsley estate. I mean, please--after licking the very fingers and toes of the Queen of Mean for God knows how long, Trouble deserved double. As for “Chihuahua,” let’s just say that $29 million is a lot of beef piled onto such a flimsy cinematic taco.

Here is a movie filled with talking dogs you watch in a theater filled with talking children. Show me the difference. Really, it’s a headache in the making (and with all that yipping and yapping, let me assure you it was). Thing is, I haven’t even gotten to the storyline, which involves the trials and tribulations of Chloe (voice of Drew Barrymore), a seriously spoiled Chihuahua decked out in diamonds and haute couture who loses her way while on vacation in Mexico.

But never fear--while her handler, Rachel (Piper Perabo), tries to find her before Chloe’s owner, Aunt Vivo (Jamie Lee Curtis), has a meltdown, Chloe soon is learning the scrappy ropes with several rough-and-tumble Mexican Chihuahuas, all of whom work hard to reinforce Mexican stereotypes while trying to teach Chloe the importance of finding herself via her bark. It’s a ghastly movie.


Speaking of Chihuahuas, one ends up dead in Robert B. Weide’s “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,” which hails from Toby Young’s scathing 2001 book about his ruinous career at Vanity Fair magazine, which in this movie is called “Sharps.”

That angle, of course, recalls last year’s delicious “The Devil Wears Prada,” which successfully used Meryl Streep to take on Vogue and Anna Wintour. But here, even though the normally caustic Simon Pegg portrays Toby as Sidney, a British tabloid writer who comes to the States believing he’s going to write biting copy for Sharps, Pegg is lost amid a stale run of dim slapstick humor.

Jeff Bridges sports a silver blowout to become a version of Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, but he isn’t thoroughly skewered--or very interesting. As Toby’s fellow writer-cum-love interest, Kirsten Dunst is a wet rag of no value--you want to scrub the screen with her and start anew. And as the young starlet Sydney wants to get into bed, Megan Fox is shallow to the point of being hollow. The only bright spot is Gillian Anderson as a celebrity publicist out to ruthlessly protect her clients. She gives the movie such menace and energy, you sit there wishing they’d focused more on her.

Grades: “Chihuahua”: C-; “Alienate People”: C-