My Dog Tulip

Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s animated adaptation of British writer J. R. Ackerley’s memoir about the special bond between a sad old Englishman and his Alsatian bitch is a singular testament to true companionship, canine or otherwise. “Unable to love each other, the English turn naturally to dogs,” Ackerley wrote, and the book that so lucidly elaborates on this aphorism now has quite correctly become a film so unsentimental that it might seem like a shock to its genre. Featuring the voices of Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini, and reportedly the first animated feature to be entirely hand drawn with paperless computer technology, My Dog Tulip has a fine array of unique credentials. Most important is that it is at once a complete delight for dog lovers and a complete surprise for people who might not be into movies that delight dog lovers.