Hotel for Dogs
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The Story
With the help of some friends, orphans Andi (Emma Roberts), 16, and Bruce (Jake T. Ausin), 11, turn an old, abandoned hotel into a refuge for dozens of stray dogs from all over the neighborhood. Bruce, an inventive genius, creates a kind of theme park of contraptions designed to entertain and feed the dogs and dispose of their waste. But the adventure is tainted with sadness as Andi and Bruce desperately try to turn the dog hotel into a substitute family for their own lost home.
Content Issues
Rated PG, “Hotel for Dogs” includes some uses of God’s name for swearing, along with quite a bit of comic canine destruction. The kids break a lot of rules and the law to protect the dogs, attacking and running from mean animal control authorities. A few (kind of gross) scenes focus on the problem of dealing with all the dog poop and pee.
Worldview Talking Points
“Hotel for Dogs” is surprisingly poignant, as the two orphaned kids desperately try to stay together and protect the stray dogs as representatives of their own lost home and family life. All that emotion gets released in the end when adoption plays a major roll in the film’s final, triumphant scene.
The following questions might spur some conversation with your student on issues of orphans, adoption, family, and the church.
- Why do you think Andi and Bruce felt so passionately about protecting all of those dogs?
- Do you think they felt as if they’d adopted those dogs as their family?
- How important is it to be part of a family?
- What would you be willing to do to keep your family together?
- How did you feel when you found out that Andi and Bruce were going to be adopted by Bernie and his wife? Is it better, do you think, to be adopted than to be in a foster family? Why?
- Do you ever seriously think of God as your Father? Do you understand what the Bible means when it says that God adopts us into His family? (See Romans 8:15-25.)
- Do you ever think of our church as a kind of family? Have you noticed all the different “breeds” of “strays” at our church?
- Is it important to belong to a church family? Or is it not that big of a deal to you?
- Would you ever want to stay at a hotel for dogs?
