Aubrey MaloneRobert Mitchum once remarked that it was only when he was informed Rin Tin Tin was getting more fan mail than he was that he realised how insane the movie business really was.
For those of you too young to remember Rin Tin Tin, he was Hollywood's most famous dog 'star' in the Fifties. Pudsey is modernity's latest example of canine celebrity, with the advantage over Rin Tin Tin that he's able to talk.
The idea of a dog talking – David Walliams does the voice – always creates automatic comedy. One of the funniest books I read in recent years was 'written' by Roy Keane's dog Triggs. After Keane's World Cup pronouncements at Saipan some years ago some people said if Triggs could talk she'd have made more sense than Roy!
Other animals on display in this warmly enjoyable film (horses, pigs, etc.) also have the gift of tongues. It begins with Pudsey being 'adopted' by a family when they move from their town house to a crumbling country residence in the Rowlingesque village of Chufffington.
The mother, Gail (Jessica Hynes), isnít too pleased but her children Molly, George and Tommy are. In a sense Pudsey replaces an absent father, at least for Tommy (Malachy Knights). Tommy was so traumatised by his father leaving that he actually stopped speaking. Pudsey gives him back his sense of fun.
The reasons the father left aren't explored. I suppose itís almost a given even in a film like this – which is primarily targeted towards children – that a broken home will represent at least some part of the plot. A sad sign of the times.
A subplot concerns the desire for romance on the part of Molly (Izzy Meikle-Smith) but the main focus is the efforts of the family's greedy landlord, Mr Thorne (John Sessions) to re-zone the farmland he owns and turn it into a shopping centre.
Can Pudsey stop him? Don't put it past him. Thorne's character is so over-the-top he almost resembles a Bond villain in his megalomanic eccentricity.
Overall the film reminded me of an Ealing comedy pastoral with its vicar, its garden fete, its kindly farmers, its rustic reverie.
It's a feel-good flick, so welcome in these distressing times, and an antidote to the blitzkrieg of special effects extravaganzas generally inflicted on us over the (well named) 'silly' season.