In the late 90s and early aughts, if you'll look back, wince, and remember, our nation was in the tiny paw grips of a chihuahua surge. Taco Bell's "Yo Quiero" ads were at the height of their annoying quotability power, and chihuahuas suddenly seemed to be everywhere: on idiotic t-shirts, in the arms and handbags of idiots, on the covers of idiotic books, and in movies about idiots who are actually smart. Then the chihuahuas gradually began fade from view, giving way to other, weirdly popular dogs.
It wouldn't have been very far-fetched for a movie like Beverly Hills Chihuahua to have been thrown to the chihuahua-hungry masses in, say, 2002. Granted, the movie would still have looked like a terrible, "Press uno for Spanglish"-level stereotype parade, but it only would have been giving the public more of what they clearly wanted: chihuahuas. Instead, it's 2008 (sorry if I'm the first one to tell you what year it is) and Beverly Hills Chihuahua's George-Lopez-voiced shouts of "Yo Quiero" and "No Mas" are poised to fall on our (thankfully) chihuahua-deaf ears:
How could it take nearly 8 years for something like "talking chihuahuas" to grind through the (admittedly slow-moving) cogs of Disney's movie-thinkin' machine? I can't wait for their cartoon about the Where's The Beef grandmas to come out in 2010, or their upcoming, sure-to-be-summer-of-2017 blockbuster, Uggs On The Run.