SHILOH 2: SHILOH SEASON
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Legacy Releasing Director: Sandy Tung Writer: Dale Rosenbloom, novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Cast: Frannie, Michael Moriarty, Scott Wilson, Zachary Browne, Ann Dowd, Rod Steiger
Extravagant sentimentality is acceptable in only one kind of movie: any family film dealing with dogs. Just thinking about the best doggie movie ever made, Fred M. Wilcox's "Lassie Come Home" (1943), sets my tears rolling. With the late great Roddy McDowall as the young boy whose poor family has to sell its beloved collie (played winningly by Pal), "Lassie Come Home" emerged as what critic Leonard Maltin constructively called "a tearjerker of the first order."
Neither "Shiloh" installment can match up to The Great One but the first episode in this series about a beloved beagle tossed out a question in ethics suitable for Harvard majors studying Kant and Kierkegaard. If a dog, owned by a man who abuses it, runs away into the arms of an adorable 11-year-old kid, should that kid have the moral right to keep it? In the Dale Rosenbloom tale, the lad's father says no. A mailman who is barely getting by financially, dad explains that the dog is the legal property of a creep named Judd--and, going by the book, dad returns the small hunting dog to its owner. Marty is declared to be a thief by his own dad. Is he? Yep. But Like Mahatma Gandhi, Marty follows a higher law, his own conscience, in putting the dog's basic, uh, human rights above the rights of its abusive legal owner, Judd Travers.
This second installment, subtitled "Shiloh Season," is the inevitable follow-up to that glowing first film. Welcome back, Shiloh! You're already an old friend. This time the emphasis is not on saving a dog but on redeeming a nasty human being. Essentially, director Sandy Tung makes good use of Dale Rosenbloom's adaptation of the Newberry-award- winning novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, which posits the question, Can you teach an old dog new tricks? The old "dog," though, is the villainous 60-something Judd Travers, once again played by the marvelous Scott Wilson. Judd, who is hated by literally every man, woman and beast in the rural community, had made an agreement with 11-year-old Marty Preston (whose role has been appropriated this time by Zachary Brone). In return for Marty's services around Judd's shack, the eponymous beagle, Shiloh (Frannie), would be legally the kid's. But Judd is not about to keep his part of the agreement. How do we know? We know because Judd keeps a can of beer attached firmly to his lips as though the brew were his chewing gum, he frequently spits (though he has not adopted the habit of chewing tobacco), and he laughingly shoots squirrels right off the nearby telephone poll with the same glee that Goeth took pot shots at inmates in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." Here's a guy that all in town have given up on, and Judd seems not to care a whit for their companionship. (We later learn what caused him to be so callous.) Only 12-year-old Marty Preston, who has good reason to keep his distance from the evil old fella, thinks he can personally rehabilitate Judd--just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. He knows he can do it because he asks the family vet whether a bad dog can be salvaged with kindness and gets the nod.
"Shiloh 2" rewards us with the usual disarming cast of the previous work. Michael Moriarty is the kindly daddy, Ray Preston, the town's mailman' and Ann Dowd as the local manicurist, Louise, provides the maternal warmth that keeps this Brady Bunch a clean-living quintet. Rod Steiger is back in a much kinder role than he played in his tour de force engagement for "The Pawnbroker"--he's still the local family doctor who makes ends meet by keeping a general store and sending his wife out as a visiting nurse.
Like 95% of sequels, "Shiloh 2" is not as trenchant as the original, perhaps because we are already familiar with the family setup. This time the household laughs when the youngest daughter, Becky (Rachel David) says that her spinach looks like poop, whereas just two years ago Marty was chastised for using the word "pee." In my review of the original, I had said that "you'll have to work out a lump in your throat after seeing this remarkable movie, plainly and intelligently told." Though the sequel is related in the same unadorned manner, with Troy Smith's camera capturing the Thoreauvian simplicity of a village that seems to have sprung out of the '40's, the poignant edge of the original is just not there. If this is your first experience with the Preston family, however, you may indeed get the buzz that a good animal- centered film should provide. "Shiloh 2" is an antidote to the frantically hyped "The General's Daughter" which probably cost about thirty times as much to turn out.
Rated PG. Running Time: 96 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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