Before we start, we need to address one key issue about this film: the historic Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier but Westle, who stars in the titular role, is a West Highland White Terrier. The Skye Terrier Club spoke to the press about this when the film was in production, That then gets complicated when in 2022, the president of the Canadian Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club claimed it for their preferred breed. Which is to say that some people take these things almost as seriously as this film took its subject matter, and that after am hour of research into this I can conclude that all the breeds mentioned are adorable. Continue reading
The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby (2005)
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Rutger Haure died in 2019, and he’s still got two movies to come out because he was just such an unstoppable powerhouse of great acting. Apparently, he himself said he was only brilliant in two or three of his roles, which is clear modesty on his part. So I picked this to watch as he was on the front cover, and I can comfortably say that this isn’t one of his best. But it’s also too interesting to not share thoughts on, so here we go.
On the surface, it looking like a cheap bit of crime drama. Just under the surface, a lot more T&A than expected, but I should have seen the “Thriller” tag and put two and two together so that’s on me. Beneath all that, a far more complicated movie which tries to push at the boundaries of what cinema could . Or, at least, something that throws every idea it can think of into a mafia / slasher / romance / cop / action / psychological / thriller cheapie.
The entire description blurb for this is “They Find a Live Wyvern in small-town Alaska.” It doesn’t explain who “they” are, the l is needlessly capitalised, and my expectations were set accordingly. Then, in the first two minutes, we get a caption telling us the icy landscape is Alaska, and then a CGI wyvern turns up. I can’t think of better expectation management in a creature feature. 
The high-concept pitch for this is “Santa rescues a rich family from the clutches of armed criminals from the cut-and-weld version of Die Hard & Die Hard 2”. And if the recipient’s instant reaction wasn’t “KA-CHING£$!” they need to be fired. David Harbour is Santa McClane, and that covers half the bill by itself.
Renowned curmudgeon and author HP Lovecraft is dead and, unlike many other popular franchise creators in a similar situation, his works are in the public domain. It’s a mythos that you can have great fun with so writer/director Ansel Faraj decided to make a genre-bending movie based that asks two important questions: “what if Lovecraft wrote about things that are real” and “what is a father was coming to terms with his son being…. an artist!”
Trash or Treasure 