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Grade: B+

Verdict: Good dog. Good dog movie.

Details: Starring Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane and Kevin Bacon. Directed by Jay Russell. Rated PG for violent content and mild profanity. 1 hour, 35 minutes.

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Review: You've heard of a three-dog night? Well, "My Dog Skip" is a three-hankie dog movie. Maybe four.

Based on the late Willie Morris' memoir of growing up in small-town Mississippi in the early 1940s, "Skip" is a shaggy-dog tear-jerker.

Morris later famously edited Harper's Magazine in the '60s and otherwise made his mark on the literary world. But as a knock-kneed 9-year-old (played with wide-eyed wonder by Frankie Muniz, the emerging star of TV's "Malcolm in the Middle"), he was a dweeb. A wimp. A lonely only child who preferred books to sports. His only real friend was Dink (Luke Wilson), the high school hero next door who was about to be shipped overseas.

When his mother (Diane Lane) gives him a Jack Russell terrier puppy (like the "Frasier" dog) for his birthday, his taciturn father (Kevin Bacon) initially nixes the idea. "Dogs are just a heartbreak waiting to happen," says Dad, who knows a thing or two about heartbreak, having lost a leg in the Spanish Civil War. But Mom prevails and Skip stays.

More to the point, he changes Willie's life, driving the boy out into the world through his own vibrant liveliness. He helps him make friends with the neighborhood bullies. He sees him through a spooky night in the neighborhood graveyard. He even plays matchmaker with the prettiest girl in class.

Directed by Jay Russell from a script by Gail Gilchriest, the movie may lack some of Morris' more sublime literary touches. For instance, segregation is glossed over with the simple observation that Skip was colorblind and people should be, too. Further, at the beginning, though Harry Connick Jr. does a fine job as the unbilled narrator, some of the phrases have that overhoneyed sound of movied Southern memoirs: "The cotton grew tall that summer of 1942, but I sure didn't."

But there's one thing anybody would learn from 20 years of reviewing movies: Never, ever turn your back on a boy-and-his-dog movie. Because just when you think you're feeling superior to its sentimentality or immune to its idyllic tone, the darn thing will rise up and lick you.

That's what "My Dog Skip" does. By the end, it's more than a kids' movie (though it's not a find like "Babe" and it does contain some mild profanity), and it's more than a mere coming-of-age story. It's a gentle remembrance of how things can pass from our lives but never really leave us. Bacon's character is right. Dogs are heartbreakers. But they're worth every tear.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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