Dude, Where's My Dog?!

Why is the FBI agent trying to sound like Patrick Warburton???

To start things off, the movie opens with over three minutes of credits, which sets a tone for he movie. The actors, especially the child actors, are terrible. I am willing to bet, if I had gone around the country, offering eight year olds candy to star in a movie, I would have received at least three better actors than the ones cast. The angles used by the director may have looked better than the aforementioned rotten cabbage, but still couldn't compare to the angles shot by a three year old dropping a recording Nokia onto the ground. The plot lacks severely, with it being as basic a plot as one could think of, but it pales in comparison to the problems with characterization. Of the three main characters, one is preteen girl as seen by an 80 year old pastor, one is a living fart joke (which is the only type of joke this movie even attempts to make), and the last is a pretentious and irresponsible child. Another character, the main villain in the movie, is never mentioned by name, but instead refers to herself as (non- ironically) "the bad guy". The special effects team seems to be made up of a fourth grader with PowerPoint transitions, and the soundtrack is made by the same fourth grader playing a recorder. In short, this movie is terrible, and made me impotent.

This film is directed and written by Stephen Langford-the same guy who gained some fame producing the American TV show "Family Matters". You know, this is the show that featured Urkelyes, that annoying Urkel! However, "Dude Where's My Dog?" Is MUCH more difficult to enjoy by anyone older than about 6 years-old than this old television show! The acting and writing actually made me WISH the film had been more like "Family Matters" and the annoying antics of Urkel! The plot is pretty much kid's stuff. Some dopey scientists are working on an invisibility formula. However, an evil janitor steals the stuff and he and his partner plan on making a fortune selling the stuff. Unfortunately, a dog ends up eating ALL the stuff and becomes invisible. So, the pair are intent to find the invisible dog so that they can drain its blood and recreate the formula (that's pretty creepy, actually). Add to this a super-annoying group of kids whose shtick is that they are spying on their neighbors looking for terrorists (is this funny?!) and you have the plot. While the plot sounds pretty bad, that really isn't what nearly drove me to suicide while watching the film-it was the broadness of the direction and writing. The characters in the film were all caricatures and no one remotely really acts like these peopleno one. There's the FBI agent (who sounds as if he's trying to imitate the character Kronk from "The Emperor's New Groove") who is dumber than a tomato, the spy kid I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the stupid dad, the bossy mom and a variety of other impossible to believe idiots. And the problem wasn't just that they were all one-dimensional types instead of people, but the dialogUGGHHH!!! Flatulence comments abound as well as booger references-though it was all bad. It got so horrible that my oldest daughter yelled at the screen 'I really want to murder the children in this film!!!' as we watched the film together. She also repeatedly asked me to turn off the movie! I couldn't blame her, as I was feeling pretty much the same way and the film was a chore to watch. Plus today is my birthday-and I definitely deserve better than this! The bottom line is that there should be films that you can show to your kids without worrying about cursing, violence and hot monkey sex. But, this does NOT mean that the films should ONLY appeal to very small children-and this is definitely the problem with "Dude Where's My Dog?". Fart jokes, horrid sound effects (such as slide whistles and beeps and the like to make things 'funnier' occurred CONSTANTLY) and annoyingly bad writing doom this film and make me wonder why a little bit of intelligent writing and acting couldn't have been used in making the film instead. After all, there are many wonderful family films that won't drive adults insane and won't make your children stupider.

My 11 yr old son wanted to finish watching the movie to see how bad it could get. He said it looks like the producers ran out of money and got the cheapest actors to film it. He says he could be an actor if they are hiring actors this bad. It was also rather violent for a kids movie. Plus the girl was making comments about not eating which isn't great for teen and preteen girls to hear. Add to that all the swearing it is not OK for kids I have heard less swearing in movies like Transformers.We ended up turning the movie off because it kept getting worse. It is almost like the movie was written and directed by a six year old. It seems it is a hit or miss with Stephen Langford movies. No way to predict weather it is going to be good or bad. This one was very very bad.