The comedy-drama Firehouse Dog is a lively if overlong tale of a boy, a dog and a fire engine in an unnamed city, and actually shot, as many American films are today, in Toronto. The boy is the 12-year-old Shane (Josh Hutcherson). The dog is Rex, a cute, multi-skilled Wheaten Terrier, a pampered Hollywood star who drops from the sky during a movie stunt that goes wrong, and attaches himself to Shane. The fire engine is commanded by Shane's single-parent father (Canadian actor and Jack Kennedy lookalike Bruce Greenwood), and like Shane he's grieving over the recent death of his brother, his predecessor as fire captain. The future of the fire station is threatened by public-spending cuts, there's an arsonist at large and the questions arise: who's going to save the station, and who's going to catch the fireraiser? It's a lot of fun and likely to appeal to dog lovers, pyromaniacs, boys and girls who want to become firefighters (there are two fetching female role models on view), and admirers of Graham Greene's The Little Fire Engine.