One the surface, the story of a spoiled Beverly Hills Chihuahua who gets lost in Mexico may not sound like a goldmine for intriguing content. But in the same way that Chihuahuas are actually more than tiny purse ornaments, so is Beverly Hills Chihuahua more than an annoying montage to all things tiny, cute, and expensive. More than just a mindless afterthought of post-summer fare, the movie resonantly deals with themes of heritage, identity, family, and home. And during the recent Los Angeles press junket for the upcoming movie, Raja Gosnell, the movie's director; Jeff Bushnell and Analisa LaBianco, the movie's screenwriters; Piper Perabo and Manolo Cardona, the actors behind its two central human characters; and George Lopez, the voice of its heroic male Chihuahua Papi, spoke about the themes they are all proud to be bringing to the big screen beginning October 3.

Finding Your Voice, Finding Yourself

At its core, Beverly Hills Chihuahua is a journey of identity, of a dog who thought she knew who she was only to discover who she really is, and of the many canine and non-canine friends who help her along the way. The idea for the movie, says screenwriter Jeff Bushnell, came from his own dog.

"I had this dog. She was a half-Chihuahua half-Mini Pinscher, and she used to always bark at the gardeners. I used to say, 'She's a self-hating dog, she wants to be German.' She says, 'Oh I'm not a Mexican dog.' And so that's where the inception came from. What if she was this rich handbag dog, you know kind of denying herself? What happens if that dog gets lost in Mexico, and ends up in Chihuahua, Mexico, and actually meets real Chihuahuas?"

And the answer—a soul-searching Chihuahua named Chloe who embarks on that very journey.

"She has a heart, she wants to find love, but she's been raised kind of in a world where she doesn't know herself and she doesn't even know that she doesn't know. She's kind of bought into her own appearance and the limitations of that appearance," says co-screenwriter Analisa LaBianco of Chloe. "A big theme was we're all more than what we appear to be. And if you look thematically at all the characters—Papi, she [Chloe] thinks she needs a pedigree, but really Papi is a true knight, he's someone who'll go to the ends of the earth for her. Delgado, she thinks could be a criminal, but he's actually a police dog. Even Sam's written off, 'oh he's a gardener, he's a landscaper.' But more than that, he turns into someone who will be there for Vivian and Rachel."

For those involved in the film, of particular excitement is what they hope its themes will mean to the many children in the movie's audiences.

"The other thing about my dog is that she would go after anyone," says Bushell. "So that's part of her [Chloe's] journey too. She doesn't feel that she has any power and then she learns from these kind of mystic wild Chihuahuas that she actually has this huge bark and can be a presence. And that I think, for kids, is hugely relatable because they always are smaller, and they always look up at bigger people, and things are a little more frightening. People like to make childhood things a little more gentle than they are, but you know, when you're a kid, there are things that are very kind of ominous and scary and large."

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