High concept comedies don't often get much respect or acclaim, and Turner & Hooch is a good example of why. Like, no matter what they did with this material, at the end of the day, it'll always be about a stuffy detective who teams up with a dog to solve a murder case. Even at the time, that premise would've been both lame and tired.
Fortunately, I've never been above a lame or tired premise, so I was mostly able to enjoy myself. As you might expect, that's largely because they got Tom Hanks to play the detective. And while this is far from his most dignified work, he manages to elevate everything by providing the single Hanks-iest performance I've ever seen. By that I mean that he's charming, he's slightly cynical, and he yells almost every line (which somehow never gets old).
The rest, for better or worse, is pretty much what you'd expect. The pairing's kinda cute, the hijinks are mostly fun, the plot is convoluted and uninteresting (with a "twist" that you'll be able to guess within the first ten minutes), and the ending's actually pretty moving. For a movie about a stuffy detective who teams up with a dog to solve a murder case, you could do far worse.
Grade: B
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