The Book List

(Chevy Chase & Benji are...) Oh Heavenly Dog

Author:: Joe Camp (based on the screenplay by Rod Browning and Joe Camp)
Pages: 139 (plus eight pages of full color photos!)
Setting: London
Means of Aquiration: Picked it up for free at a "bookmobile" (read: library cart full of free books) at the airport.
Literary Merit None whatsoever. It is a good fluff read, though. (Though if you've seen the movie, don't bother trying to find the novelisation. They can hardly be different at all.)
Bizarre visuals: The cover features a cute picture of Benji (the dog) smoking a cigar. Weird.

This book is exactly what I expected it to be--short, easy to read, campy, and from 1980. The cover boasts Now a Major Motion Picture Presentation from Twentieth Century Fox, and I'm not sure what that means. It was cleary published after the "motion picture presentation" came out, because it features stills from the movie. Also, it is based on the script. And what is a "motion picture presentation," anyway?

I can't recommend the book (although I've got nothing against it... I just feel that I would lose my credibility if I did), but the movie's probably decent. Between the two, I would choose to watch the movie, as most of the humor in this comes from the fact that the main character (spoiler! Sort of!) gets turned into a dog. Visual humor, you see. Despite best intentions, it doesn't come across too well on paper.

Even having said that, though, there's no better book to read for forty minutes whilst flying between Milwaukee and Minneapolis. It served its purpose well.