review for Firehouse Dog on AllMovie

If you're justifiably wondering how a movie called Firehouse Dog clocks in at a whopping 111 minutes, consider all they're trying to squeeze in: a boy and his dog movie, a boy and his dad movie, a Hollywood satire, a workplace buddy comedy, a mystery surrounding arson, and a romantic angle featuring a love interest for almost every character, including the dog. Somehow, it works -- sort of, eventually. Firehouse Dog sputters out of the gate, when the titular pooch -- a canine actor named Rexxx, known for his signature hairpiece -- survives a fall out of an airplane, then wanders into the precinct of a local firehouse. Here he participates in numerous slapstick shenanigans, many of which involve digitally grafting facial expressions on the dog, which range from merely goofy to downright grotesque. During this inauspicious first act, there's a manufactured hatred between the fire captain's son (Josh Hutcherson) and Rexxx, straight out of any romantic comedy where the romantic leads initially despise each other. But Todd Holland's unwieldy mess starts to take shape sometime in the second act, and that's thanks in large part to the focus on the father-son story, touchingly executed by two solid actors: Hutcherson and Bruce Greenwood. Greenwood has too much gravitas to keep getting stuck in kids movies (he also appeared in Racing Stripes and Eight Below), but here at least he's reunited with Steven Culp, after Culp and Greenwood both memorably played Kennedy brothers in the considerably more adult-oriented Thirteen Days. In the second act the arson story also takes hold, and the dog actually starts growing on us - first tolerable, then sympathetic. The Hollywood satire stuff never works that well, except for the names of the fake movies Rexxx stars in, such as Jurassic Bark and The Fast and the Furriest.