This past weekend I scored a borrowed bootleg copy (so you all don’t start saying how I’m helping the illegal industry) of the Disney multi-million dollar movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I waited till my toddler was napping and only let my 11 year old watch it with me cuz she’s had some good home training and I know she would roll her eyes with me when appropriate, and roll our eyes we did.

The premise of the movie is effed up enough. La Macha has mentioned the whole dog as Latino problem, and no matter how many Latino actors are in the this animated flick, nothing justifies the stereotypes that were used in this film.

Warning if you haven’t seen the movie I will give away the whole damn thing. You shouldn’t see the movie anyway so just click after the jump anyway.

Ay where do I start. Well, the basic storyline is that a spoiled, rich and very white Chihuahua from Beverly Hills gets lost in the “mean streets” of Mexico. I didn’t make that line up. That’s on the back of the dvd case. Of course a bunch of rough but well meaning Mexican dogs with accents help Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) find her roots and her way home. Awwww

The stereotypes start early, all the “Mexican” dogs have accents as do all the Mexican human characters including the gardener owner of Chloe’s suitor, Papi, yes the dog is named Papi and is described as “amorous”. The spoiled Beverly Hills dogs complain as they lounge around about how hard it is to find a mate with “papers”. So just in case you can’t keep up, we’re a few minutes into the film and already all Mexicans in the U.S. have accents, are gardeners, are horny and undocumented. Any questions?

When Chloe is left in the care of her owner’s niece, she ends up in a Mexican bordertown. The scenes of the bordertown invoke every white fear of Mexico, Mexicans, and Latinos in general. There are men sharpening knives in the streets and hoards of scary men dealing with bordertown poverty are replaced by hoards of street dogs dealing with bordertown poverty.

Chloe is kidnapped is thrown into the underground world of Mexican criminal dogfights. She is almost sacrificed to the bloodthirsty “el Diablo”, a doberman, until other captive Mexican dogs help her escape. So some Mexican (dogs) have hearts of gold. Awwwww.

The main nice Mexican in the movie, besides Papi, voiced by George Lopez calling everyone mamacita, is Delgado, a disgraced former Mexican police dog. Delgado hooks Chloe up with a coyote (a real one) to get her across the border. Yes another light hearted reference to the struggles of immigrants done through talking animals. Who said Disney isn’t social commentary?

Other helpful characters along the way include a rat and an iguana who scam Chloe in Puerto Vallarta (saying: “Americans are so easy to trick”).

The most offensive scene, if I had to choose just one (and trust me it was hard) was when Chloe meets up with her roots, in the Mexican ruins. Here Disney links Chihuahas to their Mexican origins by creating a long lost tribe of Aztec like dog warriors who live in the ruins of a very real civilization. The dogs are led by…. (make sure you are not drinking anything hot)…Montezuma. Yes, the leader of the long lost powerful tribe of Chihuahuas is Montezuma. Montezuma helps Chloe learn how to say “no mas” and find her bark.

Of course, because this is a Disney movie, everything falls in place quickly. Chloe returns to Beverly Hills and hooks up with Papi and they have many puppies together. Delgado returns to the Mexican police force. El Diablo and his human owner are arrested. Chloe’s caretaker and the Mexican gardener who owns Papi plan a date and all is well with the world.

So a white chihuahua learns that all Mexicans aren’t bad and that she can even have Mexican friends and lovers and that she may be a little Mexican herself. So the moral is, go hug a Mexican, well only if they are the “good” kind.