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Friday, March 10, 2006
You can't teach an old 'Shaggy Dog' new tricks
In case you came in late, Disney's 1959 "The Shaggy Dog," was an occult comedy about a teenage boy who turns into a sheepdog via an ancient curse. It was incredibly popular in its time and spawned a succession of sequels and a 1994 TV remake.
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View all photosDespite its title, this latest, biggest-budget and worst entry in the franchise is closer in plot to the 1976 sequel, "The Shaggy D.A.," and stars Tim Allen as a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who has a similar canine transformation while prosecuting an animal rights activist.
Here, the workaholic dad and confirmed dog hater is bitten by a magical Tibetan sheepdog stolen from its monastery by an evil biotech company and, in the process of his experience, he gets his consciousness raised as to the importance of family and the sanctity of animals.
Like so many recent Disney remakes of its classics, this one is all about effects, crudity and excess -- so nothing is left to the imagination, we find Allen raising his leg at the urinal and the script gives us not one but a half-dozen characters morphing into mutts.
The movie is just this side of terrible. It misses all the charm and fun of the original. Allen's mugging is incorrigibly unfunny (and he's on-screen or voicing over every frame). And, from beginning to end, it relies on animal-cruelty gags for its laughs.
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