Updated ‘Benji’ on Netflix sure to warm many hearts
Benji, the scruffy box-office sensation of the 1970s and ’80s, is back and Netflix has him.
“Benji,” a new movie starring an adorable and agile mutt who is pretty much the original’s equal in the winsome department, begins streaming today.
The film was written and directed by Brandon Camp, whose father, Joe Camp, began making movies about the very good but occasionally mischievous canine in 1974.
This was the height of the scrappy “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era of Hollywood, and the elder Camp’s career narrative reflected of a maverick independent.
Writing in 2015, critic Vadim Rizov told Joe Camp’s story — one of eventual box-office triumph after multiple rejections from bigname studios.
The new picture is a remake of the original 1974 “Benji,” albeit with some variations.
The setting is a Texas town instead of New Orleans. The single parent who won’t let the brother and sister adopt the homeless dog is a mother rather than a father. The quaint diner that figured in the 1974 storyline is a quaint pawnshop. And the brother and sister, Carter and Frankie (played by Gabriel Bateman and Darby Camp, who is no relation to the director), are updated with 21st-century savvy.
Plotting to keep the dog without telling their mother, the siblings consider logistics: “Where is he going to pee and poop?” Frankie asks.
“In your bed,” Carter replies with a smirk. Although he’s bullied at school, Carter feels free to sass his sister.
The kids contemplate a name for the pooch. “What about Benji?” Carter suggests. The dog perks up.
“He looks like a Benji,” the boy continues. “Old and new at the same time.”
Continuing to reprise the original, the kids are kidnapped by thieves — a plot element perhaps inspired by the 1965 Disney picture “That Darn Cat.”
Benji pursues the abducted children with great vigor. In the words of Chico Marx, “He’s some smart dog.”
With great aplomb, Benji manages to open a door with a skeleton key and execute the timehonored gag of jumping on a garbage pail, then onto a Dumpster top, then to a fire-escape ladder.
The movie brims with walk-and-bark shots depciting Benji wandering city streets and country roads and just being supercute.
For the movie’s climax, Benji teams with a scruffier beast to rescue the kids, and the siblings actually persuade a Doberman to abandon the Dark Side and embrace the Force — whatever that is in dog consciousness.
As cute animal movies go, “Benji” is adult-watchable, and probably child catnip.
The kidnappers aren’t pleasant, but the level of child trauma experienced by their victims doesn’t come within swinging distance of that seen on an episode of, say, “Stranger Things.”
The soundtrack not only features boomerhip music selections — including Cat Stevens’s “I Love My Dog” and John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith in Me” — but also Charlie Rich’s original “Benji” theme, “I Feel Love.”