{"id":28118,"date":"2018-05-21T07:08:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T11:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=28118"},"modified":"2018-05-21T07:08:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T11:08:54","slug":"for-the-love-of-benji-1977-blu-ray-dvd-digital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/21\/for-the-love-of-benji-1977-blu-ray-dvd-digital\/","title":{"rendered":"For the Love of Benji (1977) [Blu-Ray\/DVD\/Digital]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was never actually a fan of movies where we have to follow an animal or group of animals as we follow along on their adventures. It never dawned on me that animals have such exciting lives and I was never interested In that sub-genre. Save for the \u201cHomeward Bound\u201d movies, but that\u2019s a whole other discussion. \u201cBenji\u201d is considered a classic by many that also begat a ton of copycat films, and \u201cFor the Love of Benji\u201d is the follow up that, I assume is intended for kids. It\u2019s kind of dark, all things considered.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Love of Benji\u201d is a plodding boring movie that tries very hard to turn its titular dog in to some kind of inadvertent hero. Benji always finds himself in trouble and is this time a victim of a terrorist. On the way to Greece with his owners, Benji is drugged and a mysterious code is tattooed to his paws. When he\u2019s kidnapped, Benji boldly flees and finds himself on the streets of Greece looking to re-connect with his owners. Along the way he is chased by the terrorists, secret agents, and their vicious attack dogs, all the while he spends his time scrounging for food and trying to gain the will to keep fighting the endless obstacles that get in his way.<\/p>\n

While you think this would amount to some good old fashioned kid oriented fun, the movie takes much of itself seriously. There\u2019s very little watering down toward a lot of the hazards dogs face. Sure, there\u2019s camp, but there are also scenes where Benji runs in to traffic, is nearly mauled by a Rottweiler, and is consistently shot at. In the area of camp, the best part is when the director pans in on Benji\u2019s face as if he has a various expressions conveying his sadness or confusion. Even in the finale, when he sees an old enemy holding his owner at gun point, he flashes back to being kidnapped by them.<\/p>\n

If anything, \u201cFor the Love of Benji\u201d at least will likely be a good and fun movie for folks that love the character and enjoyed the original movie. For me, though \u201cFor the Love of Benji\u201d just didn\u2019t hook me in with its premise, and I was just bored to tears.<\/p>\n

The remastered Blu-Ray and DVD combo comes with a digital code for consumers. The release comes with an audio commentary featuring director Joe Camp, and son Brandon Camp, both of whom discuss the story, music, working in Greece, working with animals a lot more. There\u2019s \u201cBenji Takes a Dive at Marineland,\u201d a half hour TV special featuring our pal Benji who goes to Marineland in Florida to make friends with sea animals. It\u2019s on the DVD, only. Finally, there\u2019s a second feature length film on the DVD from director Joe Camp entitled \u201cThe Double McGuffin.\u201d In it a group of kids race to keep a prime minister from being assassinated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was never actually a fan of movies where we have to follow an animal or group of animals as we follow along on their adventures. It never dawned on me that animals have such exciting lives and I was never interested In that sub-genre. Save for the \u201cHomeward Bound\u201d movies, but that\u2019s a whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,64,71,340,580,922],"class_list":["post-28118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-family","tag-kids","tag-sequel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28120,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28118\/revisions\/28120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}