Sweet and very very safe

The “Lassie” movie from 1994 makes you think maybe it might be better to just see the collie in smaller doses. This is very sweet and true to the spirit of the old TV show but, boy, is it vanilla for an hour and a half’s worth of time. How many times can you watch the dog save Timmy from various “wells” before it just gets dull? Not many for me.


This movie doesn’t even have a Timmy, it has a Matt (Thomas Guiry), and he’s a troubled youth right out of central casting. Adorned in baggy clothes and headband, always more amused with his walkman than with his family, and a little punk to his baby sister, Matt has never been the same since his mother died and his dad (John Tenney) remarried to Laura (Helen Slater). Needless to say, he needs an attitude adjustment.


The family has decided to pick up and move to Virginia, which is where the father (Richard Farnsworth) of the first wife lives. But along the way they encounter a car accident, which is where they meet the Collie for the first time. Matt’s little sister immediately spots the similarities between the dog and the Lassie from the old TV show and so not only do they adopt but they also name the dog Lassie.


The little farming hamlet of Franklin Falls proves far less than exciting, especially for Matt, but Lassie has tricks up her paw and soon she’s getting him outside and living again. Matt finds some friends (Michelle Williams, for one, in a before “Dawson’s Creek” role) and becomes so in love with the quaint farm living, and of course Lassie, that he convinces the family to fix up the farmland and become sheep farmers.


And of course there are situations where Lassie need save the day- fighting wolves, rapids, and protecting the sheep from the Garland clan, competitors to the sheep farming business looking to scare Matt’s family off. The Garland sons particularly are massive dicks- scaring the sheep with their all terrain vehicles and occasionally taking shots at Lassie with their shotguns.


But other than that, and a completely needless scene where the word “faggot” is used for some reason, the film proceeds in a very safe, family friendly way. The conflicts are never so insurmountable as to become major issues and Lassie is always smart enough to make it all work out. Perhaps small kids would get very well into this but anyone who’s seen a couple movies before is probably smart enough to predict all that will happen.


One thing the movie does well is that it does look great- starting with the beautiful coat of fur on Lassie and extending to all the shots of her running through meadows and the country setting. I’m not a big farm person but I admire gorgeous looking living spaces when I see them. As to the rest of this, it’s a little hard to care once you catch on to the point of the movie that the dog is basically gonna make everything Ok.