My older brother rented Beethoven from Blockbuster in the summer of 1992. He was sixteen, I was nine, our parents were at a wedding. He promised to fast-forward through the scary parts. He lied. I have had a complicated relationship with St. Bernards ever since. The film is dumb. It is also, somehow, a perfect family comedy for its moment. Charles Grodin gives one of the great unhinged suburban-dad performances of the 1990s. The vet, played by Stanley Tucci, looks like he is planning to do something terrible.
The dog on screen: four St. Bernards, one of them the best behaved
Beethoven was played by four St. Bernards, including a dog named Kris, who carried most of the close-ups. A St. Bernard named Dolly handled the puppy scenes. The drool on cue, the paw on the kitchen table: these were trained, but trained with a light hand. The dog feels like a dog, not a stage partner. There is one scene where Beethoven refuses to walk past a certain yard, and the way he leans backward on the leash is not a trick.
The plot: a 185-pound problem, a vet who wants to experiment on him
George Newton, played by Charles Grodin, is a suburban dad who starts the film wanting nothing to change. He gets a St. Bernard puppy as a surprise. The puppy grows into a 185-pound drooling monster. The dog eats the family’s Thanksgiving turkey. George fights this. His wife, played by Bonnie Hunt, defends the dog. The kids defend the dog. The neighbor defends the dog. The vet, played by Stanley Tucci, wants to use Beethoven in experiments.
Best Points, Weaker Points, and Audience Fit
Best: Charles Grodin’s meltdown arc. Stanley Tucci as a vet who really should be in a different, more violent movie. The grocery store scene where Beethoven eats his way down an aisle. The neighborhood-rescue finale.
Weaker: The romantic subplot between George’s daughter and her boyfriend is dead weight. The kid-actors are uneven. The film leans on the same three or four dog gags a little too often.
Audience fit: Families with kids 6 and up, anyone nostalgic for early-90s family comedies. Not great for viewers allergic to physical comedy. The vet plot is a little grim for very young kids.
Animal movie review Beethoven: my verdict
★★★★☆. Beethoven is not a great movie. It is a great Sunday-afternoon-on-cable movie, which is a different and more useful thing. If you want a Beethoven review without the usual family-comedy hedge, here is the truth: this is one of the better family-friendly animal movies of the 1990s, and one of the few dog comedies where the dog actually does the comedy. I have rewatched it twice as an adult. I laughed at the same scenes.
Mostly yes, with one asterisk. The comedy and family scenes are gentle. The vet subplot, in which the dog is drugged and nearly experimented on, is darker than the rest of the film and may upset sensitive kids around 5 to 7. For kids 7 and up, it is a Saturday-afternoon classic.
Beethoven is played by four real St. Bernards, led by a dog named Kris. The puppy scenes were handled by a younger St. Bernard named Dolly. No CGI, no animatronics, no digital doubles. The drool is real.
Stanley Tucci plays Dr. Varnick, the local veterinarian who wants to use Beethoven in experiments. The performance is so over the top that adult viewers often mistake him for comic relief, but the character is genuinely menacing in a kid-movie way.
Yes. The film opened at number one in April 1992, grossed about 147 million worldwide on a $25 million budget, and became one of the highest-grossing family films of the year. The sequel, Beethoven’s 2nd, came out in December 1993.
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