My Dog Tulip

There is nothing ingenious about My Dog Tulip except, perhaps, its total familiarity. Anyone who has ever owned and loved a dog will feel a tug thanks to the animated and heavily narrated film. With a terrific, curmudgeonly voiceover by Christopher Plummer and a distinctive animation style that makes it almost anti-Pixar, Tulip is certainly striking. But this feature-length biography of a dog is probably a bit much. Based on J.R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir of the same name, Tulip is at times jaunty and fun, but the day-to-day documentation drags on a bit, even though this is barely more than 80 minutes long.