I liked Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I gave it an A- in my review and I stand by that, much to the continuing chagrin of my editor. I know many of the tough-guy film critics thought it was silly, but, as a layperson (and we're mostly the ones seeing the movies), I found it to be engaging and charming and totally entertaining. Watching the DVD confirmed my initial analysis -- it's well worth the rental price if you want to smile for 91 minutes.

That said, I wasn't all that impressed by the DVD's special features. I was so excited to see the "Blooper Scooper," which I was certain would be chock-full of adorable doggy antics. While it has a few precious moments (like watching the trainers convince a German Shepherd to lay flat on his belly while a Chihuahua stood on his head), it wasn't the wildly coo-worthy feature I had hoped for. There must have been hundreds of cute doggy moments on the set! I wanted to see ALL of them!

Legend of the Chihuahua, an animated short in the features, was funny, but it was short and not especially informative. It did, however, include the fun fact that Chihuahuas have larger brains than most breeds of dogs, despite being so much smaller in stature. I rewound that part and made my own Chihuahua watch it, then asked him to explain to me why he continues to piddle on the carpet if he's such a smarty pants. He just stared back at me. At least he did not piddle.

There are three deleted scenes included in the features, and all of them were deleted for good reason; they're not very interesting and, during most parts, the animation was never completed, so the dogs' mouths don't even move when they talk. The only good thing about the deleted scenes was that two out of the three of them include small puppies talking and walking, which always makes me happy.

The saving grace of the DVD is the feature audio commentary by director Raja Gosnell. This is a cool feature for dog lovers, because he talks in detail about coaching each dog and the issues the production team faced in general making a movie where the main characters were live animals. I loved hearing about these details. For instance, he mentions that the dog George Lopez voiced, Papi, originally didn't have a large role in the script, but the more they worked with that dog, the more they realized how fantastic he was on camera and how well he took direction. As a result, Papi winds up with a major role in the final version of the film. They also had stunt dogs! Who'd've thunk it? Raja adds that the Humane Society was on set the entire time to make sure the dogs were treated properly.

The commentary's not all about the dogs, though, lest you want the hardcore filmmaker deets -- Raja talks us through his lighting decisions, his color schemes, and his casting, and he gives us insight into the actors, the locations, and the filmmaking process.

In summary, this DVD isn't a standout in terms of its special features -- which is fine, because it's not going to be marketed to an audience that demands exceptional special features -- but it's still worth checking out if you missed the movie in the theaters.

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