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No doubt that as far as sequels go, there's its good ones and its bad ones. Some are even better than originals. As likable as this movie is, this is not the case. Its not necessarily the animation, the acting, or the overall plot. Its the lack of connection to the first movie. It was so many flaws in it, you have to wonder if the creators have even seen the first movie, wanted to outdo it, or if they even cared about it.

Some of you might be wondering what could possibly be wrong with this movie. It may be one of your favorites. That very well may be, but there's too many things wrong with it that even as a child I couldn't overlook it. All of these problems aren't all something children pay attention to, since this is a kid's movie, but alot of adults and children liked the first movie, so why shouldn't they enjoy the sequel? Whatever their reason is, the inconsistency is definitely a bother.

Lets start with character flaws, shall we?

CHARLIE:

Beginning with our main character Charlie, who was our protagonist (antagonist?) in the first movie. Little things have changed about his overall appearance, but his personality has completely changed. Lets compare. Charlie from the first movie started off as a swindling, selfish, arrogant businessman type character, who was already in serious trouble from the beginning (since he was escaping death row and all). As the movie went on, you saw that his personality was changed because of a little girl named Anne-Marie, and you saw by the end of the movie he had been completely changed altogether. He gave his life for her, when he was originally always escaping death, and if that didn't call for serious change in his personality, nothing did.

So we saw at the end of ADGTH that he had been completely changed as a character (for the better mind you). But when ADGTH2 comes along, its like he completely ignored the fact that he was a changed man (dog). Already he's bored of Heaven, when in reality he should've been grateful that they gave him a second chance at staying there (He treats Heaven like its Purgatory or something!). Not only that, but he's awfully buddy-buddy with Carface, one who not only more than likely framed him and caused him to be on death row in the first place (we don't know this, but it still goes without saying), tried to take over his shared business, killed him once with a car, tried again with a ray gun, and another time with an anchor. So now he completely trusts Carface. What the heck?

He was changed from an arrogant business man to a really caring and loyal dog, right? He was really quite intelligent too. You have to be to run your own business, let alone trick fate into getting your life back. So why was Charlie acting so childish about everything? He refused to listen to Itchy, which showed that he didn't care about him. This obviously proves to be false in the first movie, because one of his wishes to Anne-Marie was that she took care of him. So why was he so ignorant to his supposed best friend?

Another thing, why was he picking petty arguments with Sasha over David's well-being? She was obviously his caretaker before Charlie came along, he knew that the streets were no place for a child to stay. It was hinted that he was using David's talent for money (In the song Easy Street "And I'll be there through thick and thin, watchin' the dough come rollin' in") but THAT can't be it. It would suggest that he was still a money-grubbing jerk like he was in the first movie.

He was also quite a show off. Why was it that he was obviously not happy being in Heaven, being an angel, or any of that (constant petty remarks about "lucky dogs" not entering Heaven and all of that) but whenever someone showed interest that he was an angel, he was automatically very proud of it? ("You sing like an Angel" "I'm an....Angel c:" "You must have faith, Guardian Angels move in mysterious ways~") That's a very childish way to react on who and what he was, only liking something because someone else likes it.

Another thing, Charlie in the first movie had no love interest. We saw that he might have had some kind of romance with Flo, the collie, but what we saw was that he wasn't interested in finding a relationship. He "had a business to run." (True, now that he no longer has a business, it would give him more reason to find one since he "has time")

People believe that he showed some interest in the whippet angel (named Annabell in the sequel) but then later on tricked her so he could come back to life. So aside from that, we saw that he had no interest in a girlfriend. So why in the second movie was he randomly wanting one?

He said in Heaven "something was missing". But hey, I didn't see him mingling with all the other angels to try and get a date out of it, wouldn't that have been easier? (Well, it could've been because angels are technically genderless, but if thats the case he shouldn't really be "feeling the urge" to date anyone). If he was so bent on staying on earth simply for having a lover of some kind, why didn't he just walk around Heaven and try to find someone?

Either way, he "falls" for Sasha the first time he sees her. And proceeds to harass her in a number of ways. Constantly hitting on her after she says no a number of times, even says "please" if I do recall. But he even goes so far as to FOLLOW HER HOME. He even kisses her, when she so obviously didn't want it. What the heck, Charlie? Is that any way to win a girl's heart?

Well, apparently it is because that's another serious character flaw. Sasha LaFleur. True, she was a new character so who am I to say its out of character? Well, lets look at it this way. Alot of people complain about fan characters falling for each other "too fast". Well, is less than 24 hours slow enough for you? Because that's approximately how long it took for Sasha to "love" Charlie. Now, wait a second, back up. What this movie is telling me now is "If a girl show signs of not showing interest in you, just keep sexually harassing her. Eventually she'll realize she likes it."

Spinning off that and his childish antic, he knew right from the beginning that he would have to go back to Heaven. All the while he was just stalling so he didn't have to go back sooner than he wanted to. When he found out about the collars being able to give him a physical body, it was explained to him that they only worked until the next day. His response was "By then I'll have Sasha BEGGING for me." So what were his intentions? To have Sasha fall in love with him before he had to go back to Heaven? What would've been expected of her? Would she go with him to Heaven (in other words, would she kill herself to be with him?) or would she just wait it out? What a selfish thing to not think about.

One more thing that bugged me was his obvious voice change. Not just the fact that they didn't even bother to cover up that Charlie's singing voice changed ethnicities when he sang "I Will Always Be With You" but also the fact that they picked someone who doesn't even sound remotely like Burt Reynolds. There must have been plenty of people to pick from, but I'm willing to bet that they only selected Charlie Sheen because he and Charlie have the same name. It doesn't help with his out of character problems. You know when a character isn't IN character when its absolutely impossible to imagine the original voice actor saying any of the dialogue from the sequel. I mean can you honestly imagine Burt Reynolds saying "Mmm double chili cat burger with onions and pickles"? The answer is no.

(This will be continued by Juuchan17 and myself soon)

I will give it to you that one of the big flaws & worst of all is Charlie's character, now I've already done a review on ADGTH2 and talked about this, but I will say it again. For one thing I think the reson why he looks the way he dose is because some would think that he would had wanted to be young again when he got back to heaven. And with that in mind, becuase he is in his...30s or so, it would make sence why he would act the way he did and this becomes the main flaw with Charlie becuase he has this "the world revolves around me" additude.


Now this dose take away the whole reson of ADGTH 1 and all of the things he went through. But I think the writers had writer's block when it came to Charlie because if he was a good soul in part 2, then how else would he get back down to earth, unless he was a wild-free 30 something. So in one way I can understand why it happen, but on the other it did take away his character from part 1.


when it comes to Charlie & Sasha...you would think that Sasha becuase of her character whould be harder on Charlie for the things he dose. So you can say that don't have a "loving relationship" from the start and when you think about the motivation of Charlie as the film goes on, you can tell he dose it all for himself.

But I would say that he dose change his feelings when he tells Sasha the truth about himself and from then on he feels responsible for David and dose so, so that he can redeem himself for his selflessness


I will say that when it came to The Series and so on....it look like they did the same thing with Charlie and made him turn back to his selflessness. And as a fan it was tiring to see him go back to that old character and it never seemed like Charlie came full circle like he did in 1 & 2 at the end of ADGTH's History.

P.S. It you want to talk about "bad relationships from the start" look at 101 dalmatians, where the main character's love interest is based on lookes and then they fall in love with in....5 minutes and that part really didn't have the time for the two to like each other in terms of character.

it's also ridiculous in a funny way, that Charlie Sheen is pick for a character thats named Charlie

I dunno. In the first movie he seemed very satisfied with himself. ("Murdered at the prime of my life!") He didn't show any desire to be any different than how he was, and he even failed to realize he was changing at all. We can tell he's not a character to notice this when he says to Carface "What are you talking about? I haven't changed."

More evidential support towards this particular "narcissistic" trait, for lack of a better word, is how he fails to realize he does anything wrong. True, this may have changed toward the end of the first movie, where he may have realized how flawed he was and desired to be younger, but then.... if he's changed, why would he randomly revert back to his old self? xD




Well she may not have felt anything for him up till he tells her the truth, but it was still pretty random (well, it would be if it wasn't contrived love at first sight). He didn't even concentrate on Sasha at all till that point in the movie and the last time he did he was still hitting on her.




101 Dalmatians was different in the case of Pongo was following animal instincts (one can easily argue that the dogs in 101 Dalmatians acted less humanlike than the ones in either ADGTH movie. I don't believe it was the case in this point, but hey) but he was mostly doing it for the sake of Roger (Pongo: "I was determined that somehow THEY just had to meet").

Just the same, Pongo and Perdita and Roger and Anita all had a rather heartwarming moment before randomly "falling in love" with each other, at the park mind you. Some time also passed before they said their "I love yous" and got married and had a family. It didn't happen that day.

Charlie more or less met Sasha at a bar, which ANYONE can argue is one of the worst places to meet people. (That's another flaw in their character.) Any employee for a bar and/or casino can also say that they would never date anyone from those particular places. Charlie's worked at both more or less, he should know better than that, simply from experience.

TVTropes backs you on this. It's called the Dogged Nice Guy. To quote...



Are you going to cover Sasha too? She's got a case of the Mary Sue going on. Behold;
1. Amazing singing voice (we can argue this is an animated film, but the one before her was the awful country singer, so disproven.)
2. Everyone's in love with her amazing godly beauty.
3. Charlie falls in love with her at first sight and his entire character goes out the window.

Probably more to cover, but it's 1 AM, so my brain is strained.

I don't mind that he isn't a goody tooshoes like somepeople would have liked to see. Because the Charlie I fell in love with was the Charlie that was a risk taker and sweet-talker but at the same time had a soft spot. If Charlie would have been a goody tooshoes I would've absolutley hated the second movie because it would have taken away from his character. He wouldn't have been the rougish German Shepherd anymore but a nice loving house pet. That wouldn't have made for a very interesting movie.

I think they had to change his personality a little bit because they had a different actor playing him, Charlie Sheen, instead of, Burt Reynolds who I though was the best Charlie. They tried to fit Charlie's personality to Burt Reynolds in the first movie, which they did a wonderful job at. The same for the second movie they had to fit Charlie's personality to Charlie Sheen in the second movie, which wasn't done as well but pretty good I believe.

Um, first rule of making a sequel, you keep the characters in-character. You don't "shape" the characters to fit the voice actors, the voice actors shape themselves to fit the character. That's how it's done xD Besides if they shaped the "new" Charlie around Charlie Sheen, then apparently Charlie Sheen is a chump. Buuuut he isn't. If you've seen The Chase or even his cameo in Ferris Beuler's Day Off, you can tell that character and Charlie's character are definitely NOT the same, just cuz its the same actor.

So in other words this "good" wasn't very good. He was just out of character. Another hint that shows he was out of character, can you imagine Burt Reynolds saying "JUTH WHEN I FINALLY FOUND THOMEONE STHPETHIAL" *gag*



LMAO! Thats EXACTLY IT! Thank you for that, I KNEW there was a word for it, but I completely forgot what it was.




Haha I probably will eventually.

Aha, thank you for posting this thread. I definitely agree with everything 100%!! Charlie's character was COMPLETELY trashed right down to his original voice so this sequel thing was completely ruined for me. Didn't like it even as a child! I can deal with bad songs and not-as-good animation but when you mess with character development and/or go OOC, that's when I get angry.

You officially win the internet with this thread Cat. I agree with everything you said.

Charlie and Sasha's relationship is what bugged me most. I didn't mind her character to be honest, but how he keeps harassing her annoys me - especially when she makes it clear she's "not even remotely interested." And then she suddenly decides she loves him right out of the blue, because he's telling her the truth and shows he cares about wee David? The song they sang is nice and all but... it doesn't make any sense. "Cuz the way you and I have touched one another" (How, exactly? She just told you to piss off all the way through until now), "other memories may fade, but the ones that we made..." (Yeah, same point. What memories? She JUST decided she likes you, and now you're singing to each other like you've been together for years. Seriously. What the hell.)

The movie is jam-packed with flaws, like you said. Charlie's character's been ruined, and I can't believe what they've done to Carface. He was a freaking awesome villain in the first film, and now he's just... UGH. Not. And Red sucks. A devil cat... seriously?

Another thing.... what about Anne Marie? You'd think that if he promised her "goodbyes aren't forever" after giving his life for her, he'd want to see how she was and everything. She'd probably be a teenager by then, which would be even cooler. This really bugged me... he seems to have totally forgotten about her. =/

It was on TV last week, and I watched it with my boyfriend. He didn't seem that interested, and I kept on telling him how good the first film was compared to it. I need to get it on DVD sometime.

Anne Marie would be dead, or very very old, but the timeline is messed up, adgth 1 takes place in New Orleans, 1939 or something like that, number 2 goes like so many years ahead, to where they have computers and such, but I guess since there's really no time in Heaven, they can do that.

Just because "there's really no time in Heaven" doesn't mean Itchy would last that long either, Sherlock. Who cares of Anne Marie would be old? She's still an all-round better character than David anyway.

Yeah, I know. One thing I do hate about this movie, other than Charlie's drastic change in character, is how David was older than Anne-Marie, yet his problems were stupid and meaningless compared to hers. And yet the movie still tries its darndest to make sure we feel bad for the kid and think the movie's about him and not Charlie.

I would like to point out that Charlie didn't entirely revert to his old ways. He was a much better dog in the second than the first, and he waited for a legal chance to leave Heaven instead of jumping the gun and going a bad way.

I think the main thing with Charlie is his personality clashed with the way Anabelle runs things. She likes everything nice an orderly, he's too free spirited. Heaven was paradice, but on the other hand, it wasp, he got bored out of his mind because he didn't really have to do anything. Everything is already there, nothing new and exciting happens, you don't have to work to survive. While nice, it's not Charlie. Charlie has a habit of forgetting what he's doing is wrong, but that was a constant in all three movies and the series. And when he realizes he messed up, he normally tries his hardest to fix it.

So I think, in my mind, it has to do more with Charlie's base personality, he didn't fully revert to his old ways. He's not a bad dog, it's just he got bored with complete peace. I think in the series, Anabelle realized this and made him a Guardian Angel for that reason, so he could do good deeds and not get bored out of his mind.

Good analysis though.

whoa now that's a lot of stuff for me to read about charlie. but you have a point about him on all that you said though.