Why Disney insists on mining its past successes and foisting off cheap sub-par direct-to-video sequels to its consumers I can’t guess. That’s not entirely true, clearly they feel as though they can make money off of these tactics, but it’s my belief that the bad feelings they engender in the long term more than offset any short term gains.
Enter into Disney’s ever-expanding direct-to-DVD exploitations their latest, The Fox and the Hound 2. This movie takes place when Tod and Copper are still young, thereby fitting it somewhere, uncomfortably, within the time span of the first film (before Copper goes off and becomes a good hunting dog). The original seems to leave little room for this movie to actually take place, and consequently I will leave the original out of any further discussion of this “sequel.” While the names of the characters may be the same as in The Fox and The Hound, the situations and events belie the possibility of them truly existing within the same universe.
The movie follows Tod and Copper as they run off to see the fair. Once at the fair the
stumble upon the Singin’ Strays, a group of dogs who will be performing. The two lead Strays, Cash and Dixie (Patrick Swayze and Reba McEntire respectively) are at each others throat and Dixie storms off. During the Singin’ Strays next performance, Copper begins to sing along and soon finds himself as part of the group. Naturally, this strains the relationship between Tod and Copper as the former becomes a hanger-on to the latter’s new group of friends.
Cash’s motivation throughout the whole movie is to have the Singin’ Strays perform their best in order to get a chance to make it big. Predictably, at the fair there is a talent scout who can get the Strays an opportunity to sing at the Grand Ole Opry. Meanwhile, Dixie keeps arguing with Cash and ends up hatching a plot to get herself back into the group and get Copper out. In his upset Tod helps her and Copper gets booted from the group.
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