With Teacher's Pet, Disney is clearly looking to expand into the arena of hand-drawn animation of the sort kids are accustomed to on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. After all there is a demographic out there somewhere (kids) who consider Sponge Bob, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Ed Edd and Eddy, The Power Puff Girls, much cooler than the Lion King. This is to say nothing of the demographic of taller children (adults) who enjoy the grotesque caricature style of Duckman, South Park et, al. The brass at Disney feel bad when they get left out of the animation action. Hence Teacher's Pet, Disney's first feature film foray into this sub-genre.

The film features an all-star cast of guest voices including, Nathan Lane, Megan Malally, Kelsey Grammer, David Ogden Stiers, Shaun Flemming, Jerry Stiller, Debra Jo Rupp, Jay Thomas, set to the frenzied, mescaline mind-warp animation of illustrator Gary Baseman, all of which should have penciled out to a winner, but it's Pinnochio-esque story is to facile to carry it. Despite some good dialogue and rapid-fire asides aimed at the experienced movie goer.

Nathan Lane voices the central character Spot, an uppity pup, who want nothing more than to become a boy. Yes Pinnochio puns abound in Teacher's Pet and the plot pushes this envelope to a point that will offend some and make many squirm a bit. As the movie begins, Spot's designs are already partially realized because under the clever alias of "Scott," he attends school alongside his owner, Leonard Helperman (Shaun Fleming), and is the star pupil of Leonard's teacher and mother, Mrs. Helperman. This Spot accomplishes with a hat and sunglasses. Alas Spot remains ruefully unfulfilled as a human impostor and longs to be the real thing.

In a nutshell, Mrs. Helperman wins a teaching award and heads off with Leonard and the school's principal to the ceremony in Florida, leaving our canine hero behind with a sitter. And, as fate would have it, while watching TV, Spot comes across a talk show - hosted by Barry Anger (Jay Thomas) whose featured guest is a mad Eastern European scientist, Dr. Krank (Kelsey Grammer), who claims that he can turn animals into people. And wouldn't you know it Dr. Krank practices his experimentation in Florida.

Though these predictable goings-on are likely to have many an accompanying adult checking their watches, fortunately the film is interspersed with a number of very entertaining musical set pieces that are undeniably winning. Not only are they cleverly lyrical, but are chalk full of energy. Lane, Stiller, Grammer, et al. may not have the most sonorous vocal abilities, but they can all go over the top like nobody's business, and the animation during these fantastic sequences goes into acid-trip peak. Singing characters pop out of the woodwork (literally) and everywhere else, while sight gags go by at subliminal velocity - you'd have to study them in slow motion to catch all of the subtleties these scenes contain.

The plot turns kind of creepy, but funny in a sick kind of way, when Spot ultimately meets up with the quack scientist and is indeed turned into a human. This is a spoiler, but perhaps a warning to some - but as you may know there is such a thing as "dog-years." Thus when Spot is converted to humanity he is not a boy at all, but a hairy, middle-aged man with a comb-over. Why is this wrong - well let's just say Mrs. Helperman, quite inexplicably develops an attraction to Spot senior, which opens up a semantic can of worms that probably won't bother everybody but some will find perverse, to be sure.

Overall, Teacher's Pet contained many terrific moments, but most of the (non-musical) running time was so ho-hum inducing that I can't give it a very enthusiastic recommendation. And as far as what kind of moral or message it's creators wanted the audience to come away with is beyond me. Animated, semi-bestiality is not too appalling as long as there's no heavy petting and there's plenty of singing. Heartwarming stuff.