My honest review is that I was rather disappointed. I mean, this is a beautiful, lovely story with a wonderful dog, but the movie did not do it justice. Not at all. So disappointing.
At first it’s ok, wiht the lovely lady working at an animal shelter, so worried because if the dog Ruby does not get adopted it’ll have to be put down, by law, and this dog is young, one year I think, and full of energy, and nobody has the patience or the heart to try more - ok I get it that she’s really a handful, but she’s also not a toy poodle, she needs excercise and space, what did they all want, a puppet or a fully trained dog?
She can’t keep Ruby because she has a family and a house full of animals already, and people keep bringing Ruby back, giving up on her.
Then there’s Daniel, whose dream is sto be a part of the K-9 group, he’s a cop but until now he’s always failed… not sure how since he’s never had a dog before, so… what did he fail? Was he lent some already trained dog? It makes no sense at all. Was it a written test? But he did no test after he got Ruby, she was the only one tested on the field…
Anyway, he keeps trying.
To get a German Shepherd you need a lot of money, as for every breed dog, but at a shelter you don’t need to. Ruby has no pedigree, the woman says she’s half border-collie, and Dan adopts her… and he almost gives up too, rather quickly, because he can’t get Ruby to obey him… instead he asks at the shelter what Ruby likes - wurstel - and things go a bit better… but not enough to pass and get into the ‘class’ to become K9 agents… but then Dan starts training Ruby himself, at his own pace and in his own way ,and when it’s exam time again Ruby aces it! They’re junior agents now! First time he’s called on duty, to find a corpse at a murderer’s place, Ruby finds it but Dan can’t see it and believes she failed, and is so annoying, dismissing Ruby like a failure, like she’s nothing but trouble… Ruby runs away from home during the night, and while he’s out looking for her, full of guilt, as he should be, his boss calls to say Ruby was right, he took the wrong decision not trusting her! He calls and calls for Ruby to come back and she does, in time to search for a lost boy in the woods, because she’s the best dog in the team. She searches and finds the boy, and then she barks until the team finds them, and they save the boy who was the son of the lady at the animal shelter :-) This is such a wonderful story, they say it’s based on real facts, it’s doubly wonderful.
Smiles and tears in equal measure here =^_^=
My problem with the movie: too many long moments of Dan doubting everything, no real explanation about him for a long time: the wife is the real hero of this movie because she keeps believing in him, saying that he’s smart and he can do anything he puts his mind to, that he managed to achieve a lot overcoming his dislexia and hyperactivity, thta he never gave up… I think they should have explained this at first, to make us understand him more. I don’t think they portrayed his neurodivergency the right way, they undervalued what it was while it was very important, to explain him and also Ruby, because that’s why they make it, when the wife reminds him that the school system never worked for him, that he should have been home schooled, that he learned differently from others… and this makeshim realize that he can do the same for Ruby, teach her at home in a way she can respond to… I would have liked to see a bit more of it though. The ‘Dan before really training Ruby’ was too long and so boring, and the ‘Dan really training Ruby and making her a hero’ deserved a bit more.
Really, until we get to this point - how to learn better - they had just showed Dan runninga round his car to show he can’t stay put, but there’s more to it, to him, wasn’t there? I would have liked more about that, a real explanation, not too long, but enough to understand better.
Because neurodivergency can impact a person’s life, especially if like me you’re a female with adhd so nobody knew what you were because they never bothered to check the women side and only studied boys, and you get to adulthood without knowing that lots of people are like you, that you’re not wrong inside just different. It ruined my life and it’s too late now to change it because I’m not who I was anymore, I can barely recognize me myself.
ITA agente speciale Ruby
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