By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 1, 2013)

Furever is a mildly engaging look at the peculiarly American obsession with memorializing pets once they have passed on. I say “mildly engaging” because this ground has been pretty well covered (no pun intended), most notably in Errol Morris’ classic 1978 documentary Gates of Heaven. Still, director Amy Finkel takes a fairly comprehensive approach, interviewing bereaved pet owners, psychologists and of course the people in the industry who make some pretty good coin off of other people’s grief (yeah, I know…I’m a cynical bastard). The film runs out of steam when you realize that it’s making the same point over and over, but inevitably piques morbid interest when it focuses on the extreme examples (like folks who have their dead “loved ones” stuffed).