Andi and Bruce have it ruff.
Life's rarely easy for orphans,

after all, and this particular set of siblings

change foster homes

more often than most folks

change their car's oil.

Their current guardians, Carl

and Lois Scudder, are tone-deaf rocker

wannabes who padlock

the pantry, serve green-

gray glop for dinner and get all miffy if the

kids intrude on band practice.
At least Andi and

Bruce are still together. Not many

foster homes

(their social worker Bernie tells them)

like taking in older

kids, and fewer still want to saddle

themselves with both

a high-spirited teen girl and her

bookish younger brother.

If the Scudders shoo them away,

chances are they'll wind up in

separate homes—or perhaps in a

Dickensian orphanage

where they'll long for

the days of Lois' green-gray glop.
You'd think

staying together would be a pretty good

incentive for the two

kids to mind their manners. Fat chance.

See, Andi and Bruce

consider their makeshift "family" to be

a threesome: They've

cared for a scruffy yet curiously

adorable stray dog,

Friday, for three years now, and

they can't bear

to send the poor mongrel off on

his own. So they lie,

cheat and steal to feed Friday

fatty hamburger

patties, and they rig a nifty

little elevator to

transport him to and from

the

Scudders' upper-level apartment.
Of course, such a

situation can't last forever—at

least not within

the confines of a 100-minute

movie. So Andi and Bruce break ground (as it were)

on a hotel for dogs—located at a deserted hotel for

people. In it, Friday lives the highlife, as do a growing

quantity of canines, some of whom find their way in on

their own. Most, however, are gathered up by

Andi, Bruce and a few dog-savvy friends as they scour

the city, looking for strays to rescue from the mean

streets. They teach their newfound guests how to use

the toilet and eat at the table, and Bruce makes for

the mutts a multitude of clever machines: robotic

sheep to keep the herders

busy and self-knocking doors

to entertain the barkers, for instance.
Lassie never had it so good.