MovieChat Forums > Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) Discussion > Did this not bother anyone else?

Did this not bother anyone else?

posted 7 months ago by lukaskm (35)
6 replies | jump to latest

Don't get me wrong. I loved this film as a child and still do as an adult but I hated the way Peter treated his stepfather when the family found out about the animals' disappearance. Even as a child, this disturbed me more than any of the catastrophes the animals went through because I couldn't imagine talking that way to my parents without getting whipped or sent to my room with restrictions from the television and computer. I'm glad Peter's mother helped him come to an understanding of where he went wrong but I really wanted to see a scene where Peter apologized to his stepfather for being so brazenly disrespectful.

So I wrote this short story.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14302128/1/The-Son-Who-Was-Willing-to-Learn-Homeward-Bound-1993-film

[–] AmeriGirl26 (12884) 7 months ago

It never made any sense to me why the family left their animals at this rancher's house (and she obviously lived a whole state over) instead of taking them with them to San Francisco. Mom tried making up a BS excuse that their pets wouldn't have been allowed in the city, but I knew that didn't make sense, because lots of people have dogs and cats as pets in that city. It's essentially a plot hole that was never really explained as to why they'd leave their pets behind like that when moving to a new home.

[–] lukaskm (35) 6 months ago

Maybe the house they rented wouldn't allow pets.

[–] SemiAnimus (1286) a month ago

It isn't any worse than accepting the likes that the mother of Kevin in Home Alone would have flown to another continent without first verifying that all of her children were there, particularly as they were being loaded onto a plane at the airport. Even more so in Home Alone 2 when the mother did the same thing again with her same child.

Far fetched doesn't equate to a plot hole and some suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy many films, particularly one about a bunch of talking pure bred animals traveling through the wilderness.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (12884) a month ago

They weren't talking in a way the humans could understand. You were hearing them talking to each other. If you watch closely, the human characters don't seem to register what the animals are "saying" at all.

And while I'm willing to suspend belief about a lot of things, the setup was ridiculous, even from a child's POV.

No, it's not the same as a dipshit mother leaving her son behind two years in a row on two different Christmas trips. It's very easy to understand how she could have done it in both films, because there was a misunderstanding when keeping track, she was too stupid and busy to check in on her own kids herself, and it was a big family. It's harder to understand why, when she actually has the kid around, she treats him like crap, and only seems to care when she realizes she's lost him.

[–] SemiAnimus (1286) a month ago

The animals spoke to each other. Do you sincerely believe that different species can understand each other linguistically and communicate complex concepts, like Shadow (a golden retriever) explaining what honor and duty mean to Sassy (a Siamese cat)?

Also once again, far fetched does not equate to a plot hole. When watching a movie about talking animals, the last thing I'm concerned about is the motivation a family has for leaving animals somewhere else instead of taking them along while the parents, of which one landed a new job, figure out a permanent housing situation.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (12884) a month ago

The rules for the movie show that the domestic animals can talk to each other, but the wild ones don't. The humans can't hear what they're saying or thinking. The sequel did the same thing.

The story contradicts itself in several areas:

1.) The family is temporarily moving to San Francisco because the mom got married to a guy who got a job relocation. And yet at the end of the movie, the family doesn't appear to be living in the city at all, despite the scene where the oldest brother goes to the police station. Instead, they all look like they're living in a large, 5-bedroom house in a forested area in some place like Maine or the upper Midwest. The closest equivalent you're gonna find in that part of the Bay Area are the houses rich people up in Marin County live in, not the city proper. If the family truly was living in SF, they should have been living in a really nice row house.

2.) The dialogue doesn't state whether the family was actually staying there, or just hanging out for a while, and the animals were just staying at the college friend's ranch until the family moved back, wherever that was.

3.) If the family was going to move to San Francisco, and they needed someone to take care of their pets until they found a home that would allow pets (such as a privately owned SF rowhouse or townhouse), they would have had someone in the city proper to care for the animals, not some rancher living almost an entire state away.

Basically, the entire script was engineered so that the animals would be forced to go on a journey through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to go looking for their family.