Movie review: One Minute More (PG, 112min) Rating: 2.5/5

SINGAPORE – Dog movies fall into two categories. If the movie features a Chihuahua, you know it’s going to be a slapstick comedy. If the movie features a retriever of any kind, it’s invariably a melodramatic tear-jerker – and the dog always gets it.

One Minute More is a kind of Taiwanese Marley And Me, starring Ning Chang and Peter Ho. Based on a best-selling Japanese novel, the movie is about a career woman who works in the cut-throat world of fashion magazines. She and her stay-at-home husband adopt a golden retriever puppy they name Lila, whose existence changes her perspective on life, love and work.

If you like your movies shallow with a liberal sprinkling of cute, then this one is for you. To drive home the trite sentimentality of the storyline, the whole film looks like it was put through an Instagram filter. There are plenty of gratuitous slow-mo puppy shots for the movie’s obvious target audience – canine enthusiasts – and lots of heavy-handed emotional manipulation on the part of the storytellers.

Sadly, what’s lacking – and what would have really gotten us bawling into our popcorn like any movie starring a retriever is supposed to – is a distinctive personality in the doggy protagonist and the development of the emotional relationship between dog and human. Lila ends up a mere symbol for everything the corporate world cannot offer – and a didactic one, at that.

Still, anyone who has nursed and lost a family member will shed a tear or two when the dog eventually gets it – and remember, in movies like this, the dog always gets it.