We all know the story: Sweet little old lady (legendary silent film actress Lillian Gish, who must have had one hell of a hefty phone bill to pay when she decided to appear in this dismal dippy dreck) loses her dog in a New York City airport. The mangy loyal pooch makes a lengthy, laborious and perilous trek across the great big US of A in order to be reunited with his owner. En route the raggedy hound meets an assortment of pleasantly plastic generic one-note cardboard stereotypes of typically colorful American folks (affable grandpappy, sad, lonely crippled kid, perky pregnant lady, philosophical drifter, and so on) and has numerous misadventures with dognapers, burglars, and even a motorcyclist. WARNING: Big nasty *SPOILER* ahead. At the picture's heart-wrenching conclusion the rumpled rover and his old biddy owner cross paths again (sniff, sniff, ahh, ain't that so nice and touching?). Replete with pedestrian, by-the-numbers direction, a cruddy leave-no-cliché-unaccounted-for script, beauteous scenery, a sappy string score complete with faint angelic chorus, and a raft of embarrassingly cheesy guest star cameos -- Alan Hale, Jr., Candy Clark, Jack Carter, Robert Walker, Jr. (typecast as his usual aimless hippie wanderer), and, worst of all, O.J. Simpson as garrulous'n'gregarious gear-jammer Tucker the Trucker -- this flick overall sizes up as one incredibly lame, sappy and mush-headed family feature turkey that should have been put to sleep at the preliminary screen writing stage.
Review of Hambone and Hillie
