It’s time for another Lassie film and this one is definitely ready to give you that emotional punch. Fortunately it focuses on the humans taking their Ls again instead of Lassie which is definitely the right way to approach it. It certainly works for me at least although Lassie still does get injured a bit here and there with all of the big jumps. I would say that it doesn’t end up beating the last film but still beats the average Lassie experience.

The movie starts by showing us how a guy named Jack raised Lassie for a long while. She was a small pup at first and then gradually grew into full size. She had a really good upbringing and it all turned out well but Jack was an old man. He was already breaking down and it only got worse when he was beat up by a bunch of thugs. That really accelerated things and he ends up dying. This forces his friend John to look after Lassie but it won’t be easy. She wants to always be with his grave but the grave is located among church grounds where dogs are not allowed. Now the cops have been alerted and since John has no formal license to Lassie, she is in a lot of trouble and may get the death penalty. Can’t anything be done?

I would say the weakest part of the film is how a lot of the characters are super unreasonable. This is a dog after all and a rather harmless one at that. The whole putting him to sleep business makes no real sense. They try to explain how it is necessary because that’s just how the law is, but it feels rather forced the whole time. There is no real reason to be this stringent about it. When the kids ask the judge about why he has to pass the law, the guy can barely even answer. Deep down he also knows that this is all a bunch of nonsense.

The basis of the law is that because John doesn’t have the license, he isn’t able to get one after the fact. Instead of waiting the usual 3 days for someone to pick up the dog, they can skip right to the execution. It’s a case of the process being put ahead of the logic which is where the whole thing breaks down. If a rule doesn’t make sense then you have to find a way to agree with it or just ignore it entirely. Now you do have to put some real effort into understanding the law first as you shouldn’t just break laws that you disagree with but this was a very clear example.

So I can’t say that I really liked any of the policemen or judges here. Then you have the church personnel who aren’t the best here. At least the big preacher at the end seemed reasonable and wouldn’t rat him out but the main guy wasn’t the nicest. You can understand why Lassie wouldn’t be allowed on the church grounds since there could be a lot of cleanliness issues but in this case you should just move the body then. Put it somewhere where Lassie could visit it and you would solve all of the problems at once.

I’ll give John credit for fighting pretty hard to save Lassie the whole time. He went to court and risked his reputation the whole time as well. It’s definitely not something that just anyone can do. His son the young lawyer was also pretty solid here. There were a lot of limitations on what he could really do before he was fully certified but he was always ready to help as well. Even the kids weren’t bad here as they were all on Lassie’s side. It was nice to see the whole community supporting him like that.

As I noted earlier, an issue is that Lassie still goes through a certain amount of grief. It’s nothing as crazy as in the earlier films but she is pushed to her physical limit the whole time as she has to scale mountains and constantly be on the run. You can’t forget the emotional burdens as she wants to be with the old owner the whole time and keeps on being prevented from doing so. Her dedication was definitely second to none but of course those scenes aren’t very fun.

That is a common theme with a lot of the Lassie films which is that they generally aren’t very fun to watch. This one has some fun dialogue and reasonable characters but it is mainly lacking a big hook. One framing device that could have really helped it would have been to have the film start in the court-room and have that continue as the present throughout the movie. We then see the scenes spread across as several flashbacks. Have more and more of the characters enter the court room as witnesses and then we see the scenes from their perspective. It would have turned this into more of a courtroom thriller film which always tends to work pretty well. It would have given the movie a bit of a boost.

Overall, Challenge to Lassie is a decent film for the most part but I wouldn’t say there is much reason to watch it. In some ways the last one is still a more satisfying overall picture with Lassie mainly getting the sweet end of things. In this one, Lassie may avoid a lot of the physical trauma of the original films but still has to deal with the emotional trauma of the fallout that occurs from the owner dying. It’s not like he returns at the end or anything like that so in the end it’s still a net loss for her. The fact that she still goes to the grave every evening to mourn also shows that she isn’t really over the loss and perhaps never will be. I like to think that eventually she would change and not have to visit the grave but it’s hard to say. Either way if you’ve seen all of the Lassie films then you may as well check this one out. Otherwise you can give it a skip.

Overall 5/10