ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN (1989) is an animated film, now out on video, that is directed by the usually successful director Don Bluth (THE PEBBLE AND THE PENGUIN, THUMBELINA, THE LAND BEFORE TIME, AN AMERICAN TAIL, and THE SECRET OF NIMH). There are two premises to the film. One, as stated by the Whippet Angel (Melba Moore), is that, "All dogs go to heaven because, unlike people, dogs are naturally kind." The other, amazingly enough, is just the opposite, and the film depicts almost all of the dogs as representing a vast criminal underclass of society. I found these two notions as incongruous and baffling. The bigger problem with the movie however is that there is only one sympathetic character in it, the little human girl Anne-Marie (Judith Barsi who was great as ducky in THE LAND BEFORE TIME), and the dogs are universally unlovable!
