Rated: PG
Directed by: Hanno Olderdissen
Screenplay: Jane Ainscough
Produced by: Henning Ferber
Starring: Niko Marischka, Bella Bading, Sebastian Bezzel, Anna Maria Mühe, Matthias Habich.
When I think of Lassie, I think of a dog who knew too much. Way too much. Previous Lassies would bail up the villains, almost before they’d managed to commit the crime. Whereas Florian Maurer’s Lassie, possibly due to her intensely close bond with the boy, shares many of the personality traits of her 12 year old partner in crime.
Lassie is both a mischievous bundle of fur and an exceptional athlete with her go button stuck on high. She never walks when she can run but, mostly, Lassie careens around as if powered by a secret jet pack. So, it is not surprising when the landlady’s bag of groceries is knocked flying as Lassie tears down a narrow staircase or she leaves an elegant trail of paw prints when she bounds across some freshly painted road markings. It is this overflowing exuberance that sees her banished from the apartment where her human family have recently taken up residence.
With the landlady waving the lease and refusing to budge, her family must find Lassie a new home. At least temporarily. Fortunately they are friendly with Graf von Sprengel, the dog-loving owner of a grand country manor. Flo and Lassie are desolate at their separation, even though they will be living within in walking distance of each other. That is, until Graf needs to travel to an island in the North Sea to sell his summer home.
It’s from here that Lassie races off. When one of the hired hands attempts to mistreat her, Lassie sees her chance to bolt. It is the beginning of a series of adventures for both dog and boy as they vainly try to reunite. And, since she’s the only one with a phone so they can follow Lassie’s progress as it is captured and posted on social media, Graf’s 12 year old granddaughter Cilla joins the chase too.
As a dog of many talents, Lassie is well equipped for such an odyssey. It turns out that she is not only an expert at hitching rides and stowing away, but she’s a sausage snavelling fiend and an accomplished circus performer. And in true Lassie style, she can sniff out friend from foe at 20 paces.
As the film has been dubbed from the original German, there is in some places a slight disjunction between the emotion a character is displaying and the shape of their words, but this is a minor consideration. Not only is the cinematography gorgeous and the scenery stunning, the film has been well cast: from Flo and Cilla who are more like real children and not the overly earnest characters of previous generations to Bandit the Scottish Collie who plays his starring role with aplomb.
Rather than a dog who knows too much, Lassie is a headstrong creature with her own methods of solving problems. Since she doesn’t bite, Lassie frequently achieves her ends with some well-timed barking. A lot of barking. Lassie is still very much a super dog, but in a more doggy way.
With the focus of this film on friendship, and no awkward lectures on doing the right thing, I could just sit back and enjoy the pandemonium.