Max

I know I'm going to get so much crap for this because I should go easy on a "kid's movie" but I just can't. I love a good dog movie. You put an adorable pooch in a film and I'm all in. So you mix a handsome Belgian Malinois in a film about war hero dogs suffering PTSD, well, I'm down for the tear-fest that I assume will ensue.

Unless it's a movie as phenomenally stupid movie as "Max."

The thing is, kids deserve better; so I'm not going to insult children by saying "kids will like it." Maybe. But they can see much better films right now (the masterpiece that is "Inside Out" or even "Jurassic World"). "Max" is such an odd film of clich�s, bad dialogue, bad acting, and enough subplots to choke an entire cast, that I wasn't even quite sure what I was watching.

The film opens harmlessly enough (although the clunky opening credit sequence was the first tip-off that we were in for a dud). Max is a dog trained to sniff out weapons in Afghanistan. His handler Kyle Wincott (Robbie Amell, currently starring in "The Flash" and deserving better) is a U.S. Marine whose perfect and loving family waits for him at home in Texas. But when a scouting mission goes wrong and Kyle is killed in the line of duty, things will change not only for his family, but for his faithful companion Max.

Cut to Texas. Dad Ray (Thomas Haden Church) is a war hero who owns a storage facility. Mom Pamela (Lauren Graham) is literally always in the kitchen bringing in groceries, cooking, or writing random things in a journal of some sort. Fourteen year old Justin (Josh Wiggins) is a moody gamer who pirates games off the internet and then sells them for hundreds of dollars to a local [Mexican] thug who in turn makes copies and sells them illegally. More on that later. (This is the first of many idiotic plot machinations as any kid today can download a copy of a game on his computer in about five minutes.)

But when they find out Kyle has died, they also find that poor Max - his best friend - has post-traumatic stress disorder and finds it hard to be around new people and loud noises. His desperate attempt to get to Kyle's coffin at the funeral is right out of a viral You-Tube video from a few years back clearly showing this movie is pandering to the masses.

Anyway, for some reason the family is brought to see the dog before they put him down even though he can't be around anyone and is a danger to others. When at the kennel, Max senses that Justin is Kyle's brother and softens around him. (Not his parents, mind you, just the brother. Why? Who knows?) Dad decides Justin will take care of the dog so off Max goes where he is chained up in the middle of the back yard. No dog house. No shade. Just smack in the middle of the sunny back yard. This is one of the numerous nonsensical choices this film makes - and repeatedly so. Things happen just to move the film forward, not because they are organic to the plot, and obvious things are forgotten about until they can bring about high-drama.

For example, Sergeant Reyes (Jay Hernandez) tells the family that Max is sensitive to loud noises. In the next scene someone mentions that the "Fourth of July" is days away. Don't you think that Reyes would have added "like fireworks" to his comment? Did NO-ONE in the family think that Max would be sensitive to a fireworks show that would clearly sound like bullets and grenades going off? Of course not, because this is clearly the stupidest family on the planet. Anyway, this becomes a plot point and while it works emotionally, I was already irritated with them for being so freakin' dumb.

The plot of the film seems to be about Justin learning to retrain Max and get Max to trust him, but that happens quickly with the help of the cousin of his best friend Chuy (Dejon LaQuake). Her name is Carmen (Mia Xitlali) who is introduced with a direct comment about her ethnicity because she immediately attacks Justin for what she perceives is his stereotypical notion of what she should look like. (She's a thirteen-year-old girl who thinks she's tough. So, you know jeans and an armless t-shirt. Not too weird.) She, of course, says "what you looking at? You think I should be wearing a maid's outfit so I can clean your house?" You see, she's Mexican and Justin is white, so of course he perceives her as subservient. Right? RIGHT? No. He doesn't. This comment is just the beginning of an onslaught of observations on Chuy and Carmen's ethnicity that become so frequent, the movie starts to feel sort of racist. At one point, Justin and Max come over to Chuy's house and Chuy makes a comment that their multiple Chihuahuas are "ganging" up on poor Max. The fact that the Mexican family has about seven "Taco-bell" dogs and he comments on how gangster they are is just one of many stereotypes that have shockingly found their way into a film that has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. A few times someone makes a comment about a white character not liking people with brown skin because of the Afghanis they were confronted with in the war. And while that could have become an interesting discussion on racial profiling and prejudice, it has absolutely no place in a family film about a dog.

Ultimately, the film is about Kyle's best friend Tyler (Luke Kleintank) who is secretly dealing weapons on the side which causes problems for the poor Wincott family - and poor Max; a plot that will be extraordinarily uninteresting to a child. Not to mention, incomprehensible. There are a myriad of other story choices that are baffling here from a kidnapped father to a frantic chase on a bridge where one character is clearly trying to kill Justin. In fact, a lot of people seem to want to kill Justin, and quite frankly, by movie's end, so did I.

The actors here are saddled with such a bad script, they barely make it out alive. Church fares the best, but his character becomes instantly unlikeable when he's willing to shoot Max after hearing a woeful story from his son's best friend. Lauren Graham - a tremendous actress in everything she's ever been in - is shockingly bad here. Congrats to director/co-writer Boaz Yakin("Remember the Titans") for actually making her suck; a seemingly impossible feat. Her southern drawl is atrocious and comes and goes at will, not to mention the drippy dialogue she has until her "one big moment" that is grossly laughable and misguided. Wiggins is a kid, I know, but the director could have told him to stop glowering for the entire movie. Either that or he always looks like he's on the brink of laughing. None of the characters seem that upset about Kyle's death (mom moderately breaks down once) and when one character has to send Max off to potential death, he seems fairly blas� about it.

Max is the only "actor" who fares well here and even HE looks embarrassed to be there. Thankfully, he gives it his all and steals the show, but not without having to try and upstage the rest of the film that just sits there like a wet blanket on a moist and muggy day. Dogs as war heroes are a good subject for a film. Sadly, this effort side-swipes the heroism of the pups for a convoluted plot about murderous arms dealers.

Yeah. I know.