Directors: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman (co-director), Dan Kuenster.
Stars: Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Judith Barsi.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096787/
Watched on AmazonPrime.
7 songs in the Soundtracks; 1 sung by BR, 3 more sung by BR & another.
<heavy sigh> Another overly-sentimental kiddie film.
I often find BR annoying, and this is one of those. And DD is playing nervous and hyperactive, also annoying. The little girl is where the sentiment gets soppy. (And then I read her IMDb bio; she died before this was released. Murder/suicide: father killing mother, child, self.)
I crossed out the synopsis because it's not written in English. It should say something like BR gets killed by a dog named Carface, goes to heaven, figures out how to send himself back to life, uses an orphan to help him get revenge on Carface, and insinuates himself in the orphan's happy ending.
I didn't watch the end credits, figuring enough people like this film to add anything relevant to IMDb (rating 6.7 with 31k+ votes). I was shocked when the Connections page said nothing about Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) or Heaven Can Wait (1978). Granted, in those films the dead guy who comes back was killed mistakenly, and the murdered guy is the one whose body he occupies. This film collapses those ideas/events, and the dog comes back in his own body. The trivia page says "The film was inspired by It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Little Miss Marker (1934) and A Guy Named Joe (1943)." No idea where that information comes from,
Some day I'll like a kiddie-aimed musical, right? Of the 44 Animated Family Music/als I've watched so far, I gave 7 to The Elm-Chanted Forest (1986) because it was politically interesting, 8 to The Jungle Book (1967) because I did like it, and 9 to Coco (2017), but I never want to see it again. Otherwise: 17 6's, 3 4's and 21 5's. Oy.
distr. UA, dir. Bluth & more; 5
