Review: 'My Dog Tulip' is adult animation

Animated drama. Directed by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. Starring the voices of Christopher Plummer and Lynn Redgrave. (Not rated. 82 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Most films centered on animals tend to anthropomorphize their stars, but "My Dog Tulip" does the opposite. Its human narrator works so devilishly hard to see life from a canine point of view, with a canine sense of attachment, that he begins to think like a dog himself. He begins to love like one.

It's an oddity, this film: a wry, wobbly cartoon made for grown-ups, featuring quirky hand-drawn animation and very little dialogue outside the central voice-over. Directed and illustrated by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger from Paul's adaptation of the 1956 memoir by British author J.R. Ackerley, "Tulip" tracks Ackerley's acquisition of a bounding, 18-month-old German shepherd who transformed his life - the transformation measured in small ways and large, in jaunts around London and efforts to find her a mate.

This is old-school dog ownership on parade. Modern-day urbanites will look aghast at scenes (and there are several) of a leashless Tulip doing his business on sidewalks as Ackerley stands by empty-handed, unencumbered by pooper-scooping paraphernalia. But "My Dog Tulip" is a love story, after all, and the two of them behave like any starry-eyed couple at play in the world: They're the center of the universe, unaware of anyone else's needs.

Christopher Plummer voices Ackerley with the rasping wit of a man overfamiliar with his own misanthropy. No human has ever given him what Tulip does: "constant, single-hearted, incorruptible, uncritical devotion, which is in the nature of dogs to offer." (The film never addresses the author's life or career.) He returns this constancy as best he can, whether bundling her off to veterinarians or holing up in his bedroom with her while his pin-eyed, pale-faced, saggy-bosomed sister Nancy (the late Lynn Redgrave in one of her last roles) bustles intrusively outside.

The Fierlingers' animation is disarming: Tulip, in a constant and happy kerfuffle, chased about by Ackerley, his long, bespectacled figure bent over in attempts to contain her. They are a pair in continual motion, even while sitting still, the artwork itself wiggling like a puppy to the tune of frothy piano jazz. As a memoir of cross-species affection, the film should charm dog fanciers - and anyone else, really, who has ever looked in the eyes of a loving animal and wondered why people don't measure up.

-- Advisory: Nudity and mature content, including sexual images.

E-mail Amy Biancolli at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle