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.
