Tracking the Pedigree of this latest Disney dog is perhaps a bit different than you may imagine. If you were under the impression that The Shaggy Dog is a remake of The Shaggy Dog, you don't know your Disney history as well as you think. The Shaggy Dog was an old school Disney vehicle with many of the same cast members from the classic Absent Minded Professor, which followed two years later in 1961. The original transdogrifying hit was about a "Teen" who turns into a dog (sort of a more innocent precursor to Teen Wolf) which featured Fred McMurray, Annette Funicello and starred Tommy Kirk (the kid who played Keenan Wynn's conflicted son in the original flubber-flick). The Shaggy shenanigans portrayed by Tim (I sometimes wish they would have never let him out of prison) Allen are actually an updated version of a film called The Shaggy D.A. Which, strangely enough wasn't really a sequel to The Shaggy Dog so much as it was an adaptation of a British novel entitled "the Hound of Florence" written by Felix Stalten who also wrote Bambi? (My how the plot thickens). Since the original Shaggy Dog was released in 1959, you'd probably guess that the Shaggy D.A. came out maybe in the mid sixties - particularly as it was a vehicle for then "Disney Everyman Dad" Dean Jones. Wrong - The Shaggy D.A. was released in 1976 the year Rocky won Best Picture and a year after One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Not the perfect timing for a film about Dean Jones turning into a dog. Still in 1976 Jones was 7 years younger than the 53 year old Allen in a role that requires alot of physical folderol.

It doesn't help Allen's cause that the five writers and director Brian Robbins whose collective track record includes some of the very worst crap to come out of Hollywood over the past several years - The Prince and Me, I Spy, Varsity Blues, The Perfect Score - just to name a few. Still with a well made and successful dog film (Eight Below) under Disney's belt this year - maybe the whole thing might come together, stranger things have happened. Besides projects like this are typically no-brainers. Case in point the marvelous job they did of reviving Freaky Friday? Sometimes the suits tend to forget important little details. The reason Freaky Friday managed to reconnect with modern audiences was due in large part to screenwriter Leslie Dixon (whom amazingly enough can complete a script without the help of four other writers). In any case the "brain-trust Disney" felt that a bunch of mediocre cooks with a collective track record as criminal in it's way as the combined civil sins of stars Allen and Downey could more than handle such a "fall off a log" task as this proven papa pooch project. Not only is the script feloniously unfunny, the narrative aggressively unimaginative with it's smoking, smelly clunker of an attempt to articulate a poignant family bonding message - but there's also the matter of it's complete and utter waste of the overabundance of acting at their disposal, but I'll touch on all that later. Alas this stray mutt of a "Rover do-over" is only marginally better than the dog-flick that at this early stage of the game has a strangle hold on the worst film of the year - Doogal.

The film opens with a ridiculously sense-blasting S.W.A.T. helicopter raid on a Tibetan monastery, that literally shakes the walls of the theater. The feds are after something hidden in these snow-capped mountains and after such a pulse-pounding opener, the film can do nothing but go downhill. Evidently they are covetous of a 300 year old dog, that may hold some sort of important secrets - perhaps the dog is a reincarnated human - it's all very exciting. Back to suburban America, where we meet the Doogals, I mean the Douglas': Kristen Davis is Mommy Douglas, Spencer Breslin (a capable child actor) is Josh and Zena Grey is Carly. Right Away we learn that Father Douglas is a self-absorbed Assistant District Attorney who doesn't like dogs and doesn't pay nearly enough attention to his children - boy is he in for an eye-opener. (Brief rundown of Allen's shortcomings as a father) Misses Carly's Parent Teachers Conference, Forces son to play football against his will "Hooga Whoog" and his latest case demonstrates his lack of regard for his daughters feelings, as he ever so callously accepts a case that flies in the face of her passionate stance against corporate exploitation of animals. Before you can hum "Instant Karma, Allen is bitten by the strange 300 year old dog and soon begins to evince certain canine tendencies. All of which are pretty trite and true, enhanced sensory abilities, the obligatory butt sniff or two, all of which fetch laughs from the 12 and under crowd. I will admit that I got a bit of a chuckle when he steps out of the shower and suddenly shakes himself dry. Though, in all honesty, I wasn't rooting against this movie, that was the only genuine laugh I got for my 35 dollars (a conservative estimate when wife daughters, popcorn, red vines and soda are all tallied up).

The film will entertain children under the age of 14 and over the age of 6 - particularly if their movie going experiences are limited. As for the adults, plan on consulting your watch regularly and enjoying the film vicariously through the eyes of children who wouldn't know a bomb from zboneman.com. Regrettably this tarnishes Disney's record this year and drops their Fido-film batting average to 500, after the unexpected success of Eight Below. Hopefully the much anticipated Cars (that Adam and I will be previewing this week at Showest in Las Vegas) will bring about an upturn in Disney stock. What a crummy year it's been in general - you can count this years winners on one hand.

The major plot point of the film is that as a dog, Allen becomes privy to all of his families many complaints about his absentee workaholic nature, and therein the screen writers attempt to make a poignant life lesson from these canine confessionals. Sadly, it all comes across as ham-fisted as a handful of kibbles and bits. Acting as a dog, Allen does manage to thwart the efforts of the evil types who are performing all manner of inhumane experiments on animals. (Just in case this point escapes the younger viewers we see a number of unfortunate cg critters - a snake who pants like a dog and has a furry tale, some sort of a bizarre cross between a bulldog and a bullfrog, barking rats - actually I kind of liked the barking rats. Though his heroic acts are performed in the guise of a dog, it somehow makes Allen's Dave Douglas a shoe-in candidate for District Attorney. Our crack stable of writers didn't bother to sort out that particular lapse of make-sense-itude. Oh but what does it matter when you're lost in the sure-fire rapture of puppy pandemonium set to the time-honored rockin' rhythm of (you guessed it) "Who Let The Dogs Out." A touch that might have tickled the old funny bone, oh I dunno - 6 years ago, but in this case it just made me want to see someone punished. Punished severely - dungeons, stocks - the rack - yea the rack - at the very least a nasty paper cut.

As far as I'm concerned the most heinous crime committed here is the utterly shameful waste of a surprising amount of acting talent (all of whom would have been better served by going to the unemployment office rather than picking up a cheap check for this doggy doo. Danny Glover, Philip Baker Hall, Kristen Davis, Jane (the ignorant slut) Curtain, all manage to get on the payroll for mere minutes of slap-dash work. I must say that Robert Downey Jr. did a pretty good job of elevating the film as part of the gang of evil scientists, bent on torturing innocent animals to further their nefarious designs. In the few scenes that he commanded it really felt like a different film - even a good film, believe it or not. He earned his paycheck, which is more than I can say for the seemingly uninspired Allen, who delivered a lot of his dialogue as though he knew it was beneath him. All of which would have been perfectly understandable had not the credits revealed him as one of the film's producers. Under the circumstances you would imagine he'd be giving it his all, to raise the bar(k) a notch or two - not the case. He was lackluster at best and at times it really appeared that he wasn't up to the part physically.

To borrow an old expression from High School The Shaggy Dog was the physical shits, from kibbles to bits, which is all the more disheartening after the remarkable job Disney did of reincarnating Freaky Friday - which in retrospect would seem like a much tougher endeavor than a Shaggy Dog flick - how far wrong can you go with such a proven and classic premise? If you're curious the answer is at your local multiplex and promises to be there for weeks to come. Baha Humbug Man.