Oh! Heavenly Dog (1980)
Retro Review #56: An underrated comedy-mystery-fantasy starring Chevy Chase, Benji, and Jane Seymour.
Oh! Heavenly Dog (1980)
+ Feature film, 1h 43m
+ 3️⃣/6 films in Benji multiverse ⭐
A-^
Grade: A-^ (8.0) / HOF: 15
EQ 👍A- | 📖A- 👥A 📽️A- 🎼A
DW 😎😎10.4 | 🌚10 🌝11
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬇️3️⃣ 👀⬆️0️⃣ 🛐⬇️2️⃣
Chevy Chase provides the comedy; Benji, the cuteness; Jane Seymour, the beauty; Omar Sharif, the villainy. They all fulfill their roles very, very well. What could go wrong, right?
A lot apparently. In Oh! Heavenly Dog, Chase plays a private investigator, Benjamin Browning, sent back to earth from the afterlife in the body of a dog (Benji) to solve his own murder. Chase reportedly took the part because he thought the script was very funny, only to be called back after shooting was complete to re-record several lines that had been changed from the original, upsetting him greatly.
Personally, I find Oh! Heavenly Dog quite funny and charming—a very good, if not great, Dark Whimsy film. Perhaps the original script was funnier, but we will never know.
Unlike myself, the critics universally panned the film. It crossed my mind that perhaps the critics merely wanted to stay in Mr. Chase’s good graces. But that seems unlikely. Critics aren’t really known for wanting to be liked by the people they criticize.
What they are known for is being snobs. They flaunt their good taste and high standards, seeking approval only from others in the same club. Benji?!? For kids. Puh-leeze!
Good Dark Whimsy can often be a miss with critics, and much of the public as well, when it suffers from the perception of being too childish.
On the other hand, there are many adults, hopefully including many of my readers, who love the Whimsy of childishness—the randomness, the laughter, the innocence. Sadly, Oh! Heavenly Dog didn’t fully find and reach that audience either.
The big mistake the filmmakers make here is including too much foul language and too many naked sculptures—nothing extreme, or R-rated, but still a lot, especially for a Benji film. And let’s face it, there are adults who secretly enjoy Whimsy, but need to bring a child along with them to give themselves plausible deniability if confronted by a sneering Whimsy snob.
Due to the content issues mentioned, Oh! Heavenly Dog is borderline for your teenagers, let alone your pre-teen kids. So now both the snobs and the stealth adult viewers are eliminated from the audience for this film, and we can understand why it didn’t succeed commercially.
Wikipedia and imdb.com both consider this movie to be an entry in the Benji film series. That is not really correct, technically, but perhaps true in a meta sense. It’s set in a different fictional world where the dog Benji plays a different role, as the dog version of Browning. In the other Benji films, we have various dogs over the years playing the role of the dog Benji. And in those cases the films are indeed more appropriate for the whole family. But perhaps this film is also a movie in that standard Benji universe, giving us the meta justification to include it as part of the series.
Despite all of the criticism, I consider Oh! Heavenly Dog to be a movie worth watching—if you can find it. I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere, or on Blu Ray. You can find it on out-of-print dvd’s on ebay, and that’s about it, as far as I know.
Chevy Chase, in the body of a dog or not, is, in fact, very funny, as are many of the lines that made the final cut of the film. The murder mystery is nothing special, but a dog detective solving it keeps our interest. The touch of ill-fated romance in the film is sweet and the 80s pop soundtrack may be dated, but feels just right in this case.
Now I’m guessing that many of my readers haven’t even heard of this film before now, much less watched it. So if you are looking for a feel-good 80s comedy to see for the very first time, Oh! Heavenly Dog might be just the ticket.
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2025-03-24, sd7, 1.85v, 2D
+ first viewed late 1980s, sd3, 1.85v, 2D
+ 👤🔎🤔🦄🧙🥸🐾🐶
+ ❌0️⃣ Problematic for teens and sensitive adults. | PGc
+ 😡+0 😵💫+1 🤬-0 🤭+0 🫣-1^
+ 👀⬆️0️⃣
+ ✝️ -0 ➖(👙)
+ ✡️ +0 ➕(🌗) ➖(🤬)
+ 🗽 +0
Last updated 2025-04-14
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