Space Dogs

Space Dogs (a.k.a. Belka & Strelka — Star Dogs, original: Белка и Стрелка. Звёздные собаки) is a 2010 Russian computer-animated film. The film is based on the Soviet space dogs and honors the first animals who survived an orbital space trip. In Poland, It became the leader of the box-office on its first weekend, even beating out Resident Evil: Afterlife. In the United States, it grossed poorly, making $14,408 due to its limited release.

Plot
A man in black is carrying a small cage from the Soviet Union to the U.S. President Kennedy. In the cage is a present from Krushchev to Caroline Kennedy, a puppy named Pushok. He finds the other Kennedy pets and tells them his story.

Three years earlier, in Moscow 1960, a strange man showed up, who was catching street dogs and taking them away. Once he tried to catch a dog named Strelka, but she ran away with her friend, the rat Venya. Then, Strelka went to go dig for bones and Venya went to a pay telephone to get some money.

Meanwhile, while Strelka was running from the strange man, at a local circus there was a bad situation at the circus: Vova, a pig, became too fat to fly on a rocket, and Belka, a dog, flew instead of him. But Belka lost control of the rocket and flew away from the circus. After some time she crashed onto the pay phone where Venya the Rat was looking for coins. The crash broke the phone and Venya got all the money from the broken phone. After the crash Belka, Strelka and Venya were met by three other street dogs: a bulldog named Bula, a pug named Mula and a mutt named Pirate. Belka and Strelka ran from the other street dogs but the next morning all three of them were caught by the strange man.

After being caught the dogs are put on a train to Baikonur where they ended up at a Soviet space program training center. There they met their trainer, Kazbek, who had to choose the two best dogs from the group. A month before launch date the chosen group was Bula and Mula, but on the final training day Venya came in first, with Belka and Strelka in 2nd and 3rd place. Belka and Strelka needed to fly with Venya, because he was first and the flight group was chosen.

At the end of their flight, Strelka wanted to stay in space, because her mother had said that her father, Sirius, is living among the stars. Kazbek shows up having stowed away on their flight, and tried to convince Strelka to turn around. They saw a formation of objects flying towards them, believing them to be Space Dogs but they turned out to be meteorites, they got hit by a meteorite shower and the rocket caught fire from the damage. Strelka, Venya and Kazbek went to the back of the rocket to fight the fire with their feeding formula as water, Belka was afraid but still jumped through the fire ring in to the driver's seat to turn the rocket back towards Earth. Strelka extinguished the fire, and Kazbek confessed his love for Belka. The dogs look at various constellations and Strelka salutes Sirius in lieu of her father. The dog flight crew makes it back to Earth alive.

Strelka, Belka and Venya receive a heroes welcome, and it is discovered that Kazbek stowed away on the flight, but the Scientist in charge of the project tells him that Soviet Propaganda won't allow the world to know that a stow-away had been on the flight.

The other Kennedy pets, led by the cat, don't believe Pushok's story, except one French dog who sees the Cosmonaut Patch on Pushok's cushion. She then asks him to tell her what happened afterwards. Strelka returns to live with her mother. Venya holds conferences, telling his story to any willing to listen to him. Belka returns to her circus as the main star, flying the repaired rocket from earlier in the film. Kazbek lives together with his love Belka, and everyone lived happily ever after.

During the end credits, real-life archive footage from the Soviet Space Program and Space Dogs is shown.

Home media
Space Dogs (English Dub) was released on DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D & Digital Copy on 8 June 2012.

Reception
The film received a 5.2/10 on imdb, with 37% Rotten Tomatoes based on 866 votes.

Space Dogs: Adventure to the Moon
Space Dogs: Moon Adventures was released in the United States on 26 August 2016. Mike Disa was the director on the Americanized version.