Hotel for Dogs

LIKE THE recent, similarly themed Beverly Hills Chihuahua, this lumbering family film makes promises in its promotional material that it fails to keep on screen. The title alone leads the young viewer to imagine Doberman waiters bringing pink drinks to schnauzers on recliners while beagles administer massages.

It's not quite like that. Hotel for Dogs, which finds yet more work for the bafflingly ubiquitous Emma Roberts, might e imagined as a canine version of Schindler's List.

Little Orphan Emma and her younger brother – handed from foster parent to foster parent like, ahem, stray dogs – take it into their heads to gather up the endangered mutts of downtown Los Angeles and house them in an derelict hotel. Kindly social worker Don Cheadle watches out for their interests while mean-spirited rockers Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon, their most recent guardians, plan to sell them into white slavery (I think).

At least stuff happened in Beverly Hills Chihuahua. There you had the odd attack by computer- generated cougar. The wholesome, tepid Hotel for Dogs, directed by the fabulously named Thor Freudenthal, is mostly taken up with the logistics of maintaining animal shelters in built-up areas.

How do we distribute dog biscuits? How do we make sure that all the creatures get their walkies? It’s about as much fun as reading the instruction manual for an automatic washing machine.