Les yeux d'un ange

Not a "great" movie, but nice if you're a dog-lover. The title was "The Tender" in the TV listing for UPN. I had to dig to find it in imdb, looking for movies with John Travolta and Ellie Raab together. In retrospect, the eyes of the dog were the eyes of the angel, as the dog came to the rescue more than once. Lots of good shots of the dog's eyes.

What should have been a girl and her dog movie becomes just another John Travolta vehicle in EYES OF AN ANGEL. Travolta plays a down-on-his-luck widowed dad of a little girl, played by Ellie Raab, who is essentially a slightly younger version of the Tatum O'Neal role in . Travolta does some work for a bunch of low-level Chicago mobsters, the head of which is Travolta's late wife's brother (Tito Larriva). The brother constantly schemes to take away his niece from Travolta. Travolta ends up stealing a car and lots of money from Larriva, and heads with Raab to his successful brother's (Geoffrey DeMunn) home in L.A. The mobsters quickly figure out where Travolta has gone, and the chase is on. Mixed in with this nonsense is a very large dog that Larriva has thrown off a bridge after a vicious dog fight, and the dog somehow finds its way back to life and into the arms of Raab. They bond and become inseparable, while Travolta keeps trying to separate the two. He dumps the dog as they depart Chi-Town but the dog miraculously follows them all the way to L.A. Unfortunately, way too much time is spent on Travolta and his unlucky life, and not enough on the dog and the girl. They are strictly cyphers in this Travolta ego-driven vehicle. The film is a downer until the wildly improbable final five minutes. But don't see it. You'll want to tear your eyeballs out if you do.

Just watched this on HBO this morning. I had never heard of it before , and was curious. Despite the opportunity for extreme corn, most of the flick is really engaging. It seems like it ought to be a lame Disney movie, with the kid and the injured dog, but it has cussing and violence. I was pleased to see Travolta playing a loser. Usually if he's not the hero, he's a ridiculous melodramatic villain. He's usually too smug for my taste, but in this (Probably a reflection on the state of his career at the time) his character is pathetic for most of the movie. The villains are not original, but I really liked the little girl. For the most part, it is surprisingly good. Until you get to the end. The end of this movie is so completely lame, you will kick yourself for sitting through the whole thing. They really, really dropped the ball with that stupid, illogical, unrealistic ending. Ucccch!!! I would recommend just turning it off right before the dogfight at the end. Imagine something cooler happened instead. Trust me, whatever you can come up with in 30 seconds will be better than the crap these people thought up. I would really be interested in knowing who came up with that ending. Test audiences? Studio people? Travolta? The director? If that was what the writer originally wrote, I will eat my shoe.

I just thought this was an exceptionally well-done movie and was a little stunned at its low ratings.

Having lived with Dobermanns since 1979, this movie catches the love and intelligence of this wonderful breed.

The loyalty and love of the put-upon male shows just what great dogs these are.

Highly recommended!