Don't get me wrong, the setup is plainly absurd. To sum things up in a nutshell if anything were to happen to 'Crust' (a bizarre and never explained name for the dog) the Superdog, the family would all be dead. He saves their lives at least six times, taking on wolves, bears, cougars and bears again and again, all without sustaining any injury. The family befriend bear cubs, cougar cubs, and a fully grown grizzly (Samson) becomes their guardian in return for some cookies.
The house they build looks quite impressive but upon closer inspection it's hard to see how they could have constructed it given there was little manual labour available (perhaps Crust and Samson lent a hand when things were quiet). Further scrutiny revealed that as soon as a breeze gets up the roofing tiles blow away like their made of paper, there's a six inch gap at the foot of the front door and the lack of exterior shutters is nothing short of negligent.
In amongst all of this the microphone boom operator was perhaps so distracted by the implausibility of it all that he failed to adequately control the microphone dropping into shot repeatedly in the first half of the film. It seems to stop halfway through so perhaps the cougar ate him.
Criticism aside, it was a pleasant watch, the Child loved all of the animals and their jolly japes and the jeopardy was not significant enough to scare her. Nowadays the children would have been on anti-depressants, seeing a psychiatrist and suffering from grass allergies; the husband and wife would have had one or other of the child from a previous relationship and the less said about Boomer the mysterious prospector and his donkey the better.
Adult score: 4/5
Child score: 4/5
First thing the child said when the film finished: "I liked the raccoons and bears."
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