Turner And Hooch (1989)

TURNER AND HOOCH (1989)

By Ralph Santini – **

Turner and Hooch is one of those films that might make me laugh once in a while but nevertheless convinces me that it’s overall a stupid one.  Tom Hanks can be hysterically funny when playing his character, Scott Turner a displeasing neat freak of a police investigator, yell desperately at a mangy, drooling French Mastiff named Hooch who likes to make lots of ugly messes all the time in his presence. The big problem here is that he’s got no choice but to look after the mongrel because his old master, Amos Reed (John McIntire in his final role after making so many films for 40 years) has been murdered by organized crime that turns out to be involved in the fishing business.

So Scott must handle his nearly-impossible struggle with the dog which reacts rather poorly to anger even if it means attempting to kill the mangy canine. But unfortunately for Scott he must handle the dog, because he is in fact the closest thing to a witness in his old master’s murder. Meanwhile Scott tries to take Hooch to a female veterinarian Dr. Emily Carson (Mare Winningham) but Hooch won’t cooperate until it turns out she has a cute Collie that the Mastiff has on her. And then the film goes on focusing on Scott’s investigation to old man Reed’s cruel murder.

To be absolutely fair, the film has two or three big sequences that gave me plenty of laughs because I personally find Tom Hanks to be very funny when he yells at Hooch. It makes me conclude that Pixar probably looked at this film which was rather successful even surpassing a similar film, K-9 released the same year, so they could cast Hanks as the voice of Woody in Toy Story. Neverthless I can’t quite recommend Turner and Hooch due its insubstantial screenplay that took only 5 writers to make it. Besides I happen to have found the ending be very disappointing and overall its story is likewise unintelligible.