Borrowed this from my Grandma, cause I loved the original. Nice try! Movie went in too many directions. It was not consistent with the book or the original movie. It was a good effort. One good thing I can say is that the movie is clean and okay for the family to watch, so I give it 3 stars.It does have a few anti-war references at the beginning when he talks about his leg being amputated. Then they tried to recreate the feelings you had for the Billy and his dogs as an adult Billy and it just did not work.Lots of unanswered questions: Where did his parents go? Where was his other sister? Was Rainie Pritchard the kid whose brother died in the original? Why was that not mentioned? Whose story was this? By the time you get to the end you don't really care too much about any of the characters and it just stopped being fun.

The *idea* was sound, but the plot needed much more work. It looked like an author's rough sketch transformed into a film. There were some clear "main" ideas, ideas that were surrounded by sketches that sometimes worked, sometimes confused, and sometimes flopped. Such as the neighbor boy. He lives "just up the road", but it is six months before he comes to meet the dogs--dogs that he has been dying to see. I *think* it's six months, the dogs start out as pups in the spring and are grown up by the fall, and the boy meets the dogs when they are adults. Then there's the love scene at the high school(?). He was supposed to pick her up "on Saturday night." Judging from the activities between that scene and the love scene, much more time has passed than just a few days! The movie is full of such gaffs. What this movie desperatly needed was an experienced writer that could take the main ideas and work them into something more cohesive, something that could project more emotion into the story. As it is, you don't feel much for the people and dogs because you are too busy trying to make the movie make more sence. An editor who had some experience would have helped too, part of the movie's problems were due to bad editing. There were a couple of quick scenes that made no sence whatsoever, as if there was something removed but not completely. A re-make would be welcome.

(NOTE: SOME MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD) When this movie starts, we find Billy (who claimed at the end of part one never to have been back to the Ozarks) returning from World War II to the home he said he had never been back to in part one when he's telling the story as a much older man. We never find out what became of Billy's parents from part one, as the only characters returning are Grandpa, Billy's sister Sara, and Rainie Pritchard, who has somehow become Billy's best friend. Even though Rainie saved Billy's life during the war (how sappy), the writer's fail to establish any believable friendship between the two young men. There is barely any reference to part one (which has its own problems), and Billy even goes as far as naming his new dogs Old Dan and Little Ann, the names from the dogs in part one. However, the writers in part two make the same mistake as the writer's in part one: they don't spend enough time developing the characters of the dogs to create sympathy for them. This is well done in Wilson Rawls' book (on which these characters are based), but not in the movie versions. The movie is full of very lame melodramatic scenes, as well, and is very predictable in spots. (The spots that aren't predictable are even worse!) I won't give away things that happen at the end, but these things are so ridiculous that you'll probably watch from morbid curiosity. In fact, some of the movie is so ridiculous that it's probably best to just see it, as it speaks for itself.In closing, if you like to watch really horrid movies to make fun of them, you'll love this one. If you're one of those people who doesn't like to waste a lot of your time, then leave this one on the shelf of your video store, if they're unfortunate enough to have it.