Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Puppy Love’ on Amazon Freevee, a Hacky Rom-Com That Piddles on the Carpet, To Our Unamusement

Dog lovers will find their meddle tested by Puppy Love (now streaming on Amazon Freevee), a romantic comedy in which adorable dogs find themselves trapped in an opposites-attract plot that stinks like an expired can of Alpo. Pretty Little Liars star Lucy Hale and the guy who plays The Flash on TV, Grant Gustin (his second second-fiddle-to-a-pooch movie after Rescued by Ruby), co-headline the film, playing owners of dogs – dogs who are far more believable as characters than their human counterparts. Is there a chance that this movie isn’t a, you know, thing that woofs and sometimes piddles on the rug? Yeah, of course, but considering this is a Freevee flick that would be on the Hallmark Channel if it wasn’t for all the cursing, the odds are slim.

PUPPY LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: SHE’S emotionally shut off. Goes out a lot. Likes to drink and party. A slob – her apartment is cluttered with bric-a-brac and spilled food. HE’S a raw nerve. Stays home all the time. Can barely make it to work. Obsesses over his Pez dispensers and Star Wars collectibles. Is a germophobe. More than a little OCD. THESE are your two rom-com leads. THIS WILL NEVER EVER WORK. What a mismatch. Totally hopeless. Might as well turn the TV off right now!

But! Don’t touch that dial! Circumstances, possibly involving destiny or just run-of-the-mill coincidence or the work of screenwriters all too comfortable with inveterate cliches, will bring Nicole (Hale) and Max (Gustin) together. You just gotta hang in there with this plot: As a salve for Max’s neurotic behavior, his analyst tells him to get a therapy dog. So he summons up all his courage and walks out the front door to the animal shelter, where he adopts a flop-eared spaniel who’s quite possibly the mellowest dog to ever exist. He names her Chloe and begins doting on her, as she deserves. Meanwhile, somewhere else in town, Nicole keeps spotting a scruffy stray mutt on her way to the clubs or to fancy-ass houses where she works as a home stager. He’s a cutie, and friendly, and before you know it, she brings him home for a bath, and he helps out by scarfing some ancient ramen off the floor. I mean, somebody’s gotta clean up around here. She names him Channing Tatum, possibly because Tatum was once in a movie titled Dog.

These people are in love with their dogs. Now maybe it’s time for them to have quality human relationships? Easier said than done. One or the other swipes right and they end up at the park, where Chloe and Channing Tatum waste no time getting to the nitty-gritty: Two tickets to Humptown, baby. It doesn’t go as well with Nicole and Max, because she essentially force-feeds him habanero chicken wings (“It’s truth serum,” she explains) which triggers his everything-phobias and finds him puking and racing across the park to a disgusting porta-potty to release his inflamed intestines. As bad dates go, this one’s on par with Titanic-meets-iceberg.

At this point, we’re UTTERLY CONVINCED that Max and Nicole will never see each other again, and the movie will heretofore consist of parallel stories in which these two people take care of their dogs and move on with their infinitely incompatible lives. But we’d be wrong as shit! See, these dog owners are irresponsible, and didn’t get their furballs fixed. Chloe’s knocked up, and initiates the screenplay’s jokey central conceit, which is as plausible as the James Webb Telescope snapping a shot of the Gilligan’s Island cast on the surface of Pluto: Max and Nicole reunite Channing Tatum with Chloe because they feel it’s their responsibility as pending dog-grandparents. The plot then forces Nicole and Channing Tatum to move in with Max and Chloe for maximum incongruous-personalities hijinks, and shoves them into wacky situations, e.g., doggie lamaze class. I think there’s a Just Bone Each Other, Already joke to be made, but I’d never sink that low, or play spoiler, even though you know exactly what’s going to happen from here on out. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Puppy Love is Must Love Dogs meets Knocked Up meets another recent Hale rom-com, The Hating Game.

Performance Worth Watching: Hale and Gustin are good enough to leaven the film’s sappy, sentimental crudola with a layer or two of legit emotion – but when actors of their notable talent are upstaged by cute-dog reaction shots, it’s a clear indication that the writing isn’t up to snuff. 

Memorable Dialogue: This Nicole line gets this movie’s Who Writes This Shit Award: “Better a mutt than a slut!”

Sex and Skin: The incongruous-personalities hijinks include a scene in which Gustin tries to cover his naked self up with a teensy washcloth.

Our Take: Bright, shiny, empty, dumb rom-coms like Puppy Love aren’t unsalvageable; all they need to do is make us laugh. But the ha-ha-has are ha-ha-hard to come by in this formulaic piffle with a screenplay that tempts me to break my self-imposed rule about making hacky ChatGPT jokes. So I’ll say this about Puppy Love: It’s plug-and-play. Paint-by-numbers. Just-add-water. Use-once-and-destroy – although I wouldn’t recommend using it once, and just skipping right to destroy.

I know – I’m being mean. Not all films need to hit Mach-10 in order to entertain us, and this movie is slick, drinkable entertainment, made by professionals in order to keep professionals like Hale and Gustin and dog handlers and best boys and grips and script doctors and directors employed. And yet, your entertainment is not guaranteed when the principal characters are boilerplate types with little in the way of distinguishing characteristics, slogging through one bland scene after another, surrounded by witlessly rendered supporting characters, including the wacky work client, the wacky best friends, the wacky parents, the wacky vet, the wacky pharmacist, the wacky poodle owner, the wacky lamaze instructor… it goes on. Enough already. Uncle. Mercy. This is me, tapping the f— out.

You’d think directors Nick Fabiano and Richard Alan Reid would have the wherewithal to understand that the material here is flaccid as thrice-boiled asparagus, and lean heavily into the cute-dog shenanigans, but no, their goal is to make us care about Max and Nicole, and indulge fart and vomit gags, not get us oohing and awwwing over frolicking puppy-wuppies. It’s admittedly difficult to dislike Hale and Gustin, who do their damnedest to minimize the film’s cringeworthiness, but their work here is thankless go-nowhere wheel-spinning. Puppy Love? More like POOPY LOVE!

Our Call: Bad dog movie! BAD DOG MOVIE. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.