My Dog Tulip [DVD]

This did everything i hoped for. It was beautifully drawn with every scene bringing more visual delights. The colours and drawing styles reflected the quiet, gentle humour of the story. It successfully evoked the loneliness of a confirmed bachelor whose later life is enriched by his relationship with his dog. AS a confirmed 'dog disliker' I was surprisingly drawn into the strong bond that developed between the two of them, both of whom were entirely dependent on the another to provide emotional support as well as companionship. The supporting cast were small stars in their own rights. I loved the failed dog breeder with all his bombast and the ex army officer with all his chairs.
A wonderful piece of animation magic and a perfect antidote to today's 3D deluge.

I found this a refreshingly 'different' piece of animation, both in style and subject matter and although I've not read Ackerley's memoir on which it was based, I could 'feel' the friendship between master and dog portrayed with heart and humour (OK, some of it toilet).

Others have reviewed the film (which I would recommend) but I found the 'making of' feature very interesting. Made by oscar nominated husband and wife, Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, almost entirely in their own home, completely hand drawn on their computers - he doing the animation in one room working a 16 hour day - she doing the backgrounds in another. It was their lifestyle of complete dedication to movie making with no holidays, just gardening for her and dog walking for him, that I found quite amazing if not almost unbelievable!

'My Dog Tulip' - if you are a true animation fan, I can't imagine you not enjoying this. For those less dedicated but looking for entertainment, it achieves that but it's not Disney and has a 12 cert. which is probably about the right age upward to appreciate it.

A curious film indeed: a hand-drawn animation painstakingly put together by a husband and wife team, bringing to vivid and imaginative life JR Ackerley's memoir of his later life with a dog called Tulip.

Ackerly was a commissioning editor with the BBC in the war years, and an (ahem) confirmed bachelor throughout his life. In his fifties, he acquired Tulip, a young alsatian bitch, apparently from a northern coal miner who didn't treat her well. How Ackerley came to acquire the dog, and why he left comfortable Putney for a colliery to collect it, isn't explored.

So, as it is pitched, a warm and heartfelt meditation by a lonely man who has found companionship in his autumn years. I went in expecting to be enchanted, for my earthly troubles to melt away for an hour or two (for that's the absolvent character of pictures like this). They didn't. My Dog Tulip was in parts amusing and diverting, if never laugh-out-loud funny (but this didn't stop the chap next to me laughing out loud, though I submit he did this in encouragement rather than genuine reaction). As I suspect most people were, I was rooting for the picture: willing it to be heartwarming: but in honest reflection it missed, fairly solidly, that golden opportunity.

Christopher Plummer certainly captured the cantankerous, elderly, Ackerley perfectly. But of the relationship between man and hound - supposedly the core of this picture - there was little. By way of proxy there was a close examination - literally, on occasion - of the dog's bowel and bladder motions. Now this sort of thing you might expect as a rum entree: a means of establishing terms between man and dog, to set up the main stage for the relationship: after all, that a dog defecates, urinates and vomits is not exactly news to anyone who has ever owned a dog, and I'm not sure what was achieved by dwelling on them except easy and not especially durable laughs. Yet dwell on them the Fierlingers did, for almost half the picture, which was taken up with Ackerley's dry observations about this activity and its effect on Ackerley's own distant human relationships (not generally good anyway, and a crapping dog didn't help).

The second half of the picture then charts Ackerley's forlorn attempts to "marry" Tulip (rather like her master, Tulip doesn't seem to be especially into the concept), again with forlorn effects on a cast of dog breeders and other passers-through. No doubt there was something poignant about the juxtaposition of this enterprise and Ackerley's own indisposition to do anything of the sort himself - but not three-quarters of an hour's worth.

Mildly diverting, and well delivered by Christopher Plummer certainly, but really not much to sustain interest for as long as it took, and I admit my attention did wander off on occasion.

The autumn years of Tulip's existence come and go quickly and what you're left with is a story of a rather cantankerous and, frankly, misanthropic old man who got a dog, found companionship of a sort in humans he could not abide, it crapped a lot, then died.

Olly Buxton