My Dog Skip

It occurred to me, just before I got ready for the film "My Dog Skip", that there has never been a time in my life, thus far, when there wasn't a dog or two about.

Along with the cat or two, the assorted hamsters, fish, birds, the skunk, the feral cat that was the offspring of a mountain lion, the snakes, the racoons, the hawks, there has always been a dog present in my life. Even in college there was a dog. It wasn't mine, but there was a dog.

When this revelation smacked me square in the reality I had to stop and consider why this was.

Simply, because. Because dogs are, as the time-worn adage goes, man's best friend. When I hit a particularly rough patch in life, when there were few people I could count on, there was a dog. When I was growing up, and other kids lived too far away to come over regularly, there was a dog. My best friend of best friends.

Which, for what it is worth, goes to demonstrate a certain prejudice on my part when it comes to films and movies featuring canines.

Which, for what it is worth, goes to explain why I demonstrate a certain, unexplain dislike of certain people. Like the dogs in my life, I am quick to make opinions against people.

Why?

Ask the dog. He probably knows better than I do.

"My Dog Skip" is about dogs and kids. About the friendship, the relationship between.

In "My Dog Skip" dogs aren't just friends and buds but wonders. They accomplish astounding things, but always, like Skip in "My Dog Skip", look to their master to find out what they should do next.

"My Dog Skip" is based on a memoir by Willie Morris, who grew up in Yazoo, on the Mississippi Delta, who went on to become editor of Harper's magazine.

The movie is set in the summer of 1942 and focuses on a boy named Willie Morris. Willie is a lonely child, whose type is all-too-well-known: He is no good at sports, he doesn't make friends easily, and he has, at best, a strained relationship with his father, Jack (Kevin Bacon), who lost a leg in the Spanish Civil War. Willie's mother (Diane Lane) tries to make her son happy, but doesn't succeed: His birthday party features guests--old folks--and his gifts include an adult trapping: A bow tie.

Despite this, Willie has a friend, but he is much older: Dink (Luke Wilson). A high school sports star who lives next door. But then he goes off to war before he can tell Willie the importance of a good curve ball and Willie is left alone.

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