Teacher's Pet

The term "family film" really gets me angry. Why? Because for every film that is out there that is good enough to be for the entire family, there are at least 50 others that are not only wasting their parent's time, but they are not respecting their intended audience. Disney's new animated film TEACHER'S PET is both patronizing and extremely sloppy.

Spot Helperman(Voiced by Nathan Lane, The Lion King) is a dog who longs to be a real boy. He dresses up like a little boy and goes to school with his master Leonard (Shaun Fleming, Jeepers Creepers 2), and for some odd reason Leonard's mother (Debra Joy Rupp, TV's That 70's Show) is their teacher. When Leonard's mother wins a trip to Florida, Leonard longs to have fun on the beach with his dog. Spot wants to go to Florida to meet a wacko doctor (Kelsey Grammer) who can turn animals into humans.

As I sat through this supposed "musical comedy" I asked myself, Why? Who in their right mind said this film was worthy enough to make? Who said "hey the script is ready, let's make this movie?" The simple answer is money. But let's be honest, this turkey is not going to make any money. This is not the film that is going to be locked in the Disney Vault for ten years, to be released with much fanfare.

This is a shoddy movie that aspires to be HEY ARNOLD, THE MOVIE. Its script is not technically a story, it is bad jokes designed to stretch running time. TEACHER'S PET is a 15 minute animated short with over an hour of bad jokes designed to stretch the running time.

Most would probably say, "why are you being so hard on this movie? It's designed for little kids not a 24 year old male." I say if you are going to spend large amounts of money on a film and you expect parents to bring their little tykes, and you create a film that makes even a toddler bored, I cannot go easy on it.

This film has no charm. The jokes are too abrasive, and there are far too many things going on. It also features this really odd subplot involving Spot and Leonard's mother that made me feel really, really uncomfortable. Its inclusion was both unnecessary and hard to explain without making it sound sicker than it really is.

Finally I muse about the PG rating for this film. Why? It will play well only to four or five year olds. When I think of a PG movie I think of kids between 8-10. Why create a film geared at toddlers and market it to seven-year olds? You got me. I don't know why this film is PG. It contains no bad language, no sex, and no real violence. It's not even scary. If anyone can figure this out, I will give you a hearty handshake.

If you are looking to waste a child's time, stay at home and rent ET. They'll love it. TEACHER'S PET on the other hand is a vapid mess. If you want my advice, instead of dropping forty bucks to take the brood to see this film, spend that money on a really big cardboard box. Your kids will have far more fun with that.

While critics will praise this Disney TV spin off because it doesn't look like a Disney film little else distinguishes this film from typical TV drek. It needs it's short running time because there really isn't much there beyond it's tv incarnation . The animation is average Korean junk . Unless you are a devoted lover of Basemans designs or a mindless Disney fanatic this film will bore you . It did me.

Timothy Björklund gives us a complete box-office flop of a Disney movie.

Our story follows Spot the dog on his adventure to become a boy. This time, in feature-length form, he travels to California to visit the sane (he swears) Dr. Ivan Krank, who says he can turn any animal human.

Nathan Lane plays Spot Helperman or Scott Leadready II when he dresses up like a boy. I love Nathan Lane's voice acting, he was great in the Lion King, and is great in this, no complaints.

Shaun Flemming plays Leonard Amadeus Helperman, Spot's owner and best friend. His voice acting is done well enough, not as great as Nathan Lane's, but nothing terrible.

Kelsey Grammar plays the SANE Dr. Ivan Krank, a scientist who has developed a very inept way of transforming animals to humans. Kelsey Grammar has fine voice acting, probably from his experience as Sideshow Bob on the hit series The Simpsons.

I have no complaints about this movie, it was well crafted, pretty well drawn, and I don't see why it wasn't a hit. Two big things kind of bothered me though, for one I hate Debra Jo Rupp's voice, I find her annoying! Second, the way the animators drew people kind of make them look creepy.

I personally feel the the Teacher's Pet to me is film of the year. It is bright, funny, musical, and very different from the normal Disney we usually see. I have been a fan of the TV series ever since 2002 and when I saw that there was a movie coming out I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and it turned out the movie was exactly what I thought it would be (Very Entertaining). Sure the animation was strange, but thats the way Gary Baseman draws, what where you expecting? The music is very unique and many of the songs are quite toe-tapers. The voices are one of the best parts of the whole movie, Nathan Lane really does an awesome job as Spot, Scott Leadready, Scott "Manly" Manning. Also, the jokes are not stupid, they are very comical, sure they are not Adam Sandler type jokes but they are very funny none the less. Personally, I would take Teacher's Pet over any of those other movies that came out around that time Barbershop II, Calendar Girl, Along Came Polly etc. If you ask me the money that a movie brings in doesn't make the movie great it is how much a person enjoyed the movie that makes it great. I have seen this movie about five times so far and play to buy it the day it comes out on DVD just because it is so enjoyable. I hope to hear many other good reports for Teacher's Pet in the future.

Teacher's Pet has always been a familiar title for me, going back to my youth. I never grew up with show, nor did I know it had even had been based on a show until a fair amount of time had passed from the film's first and subsequent viewings. Now as an adult with a fresh perspective on the film that held such a dear place for a childhood, I can confirm that, while by no means a masterpiece, does the film still manage to be a cute and funny, albeit strange, film that is highly entertaining for kids that even some adults may get a chuckle out of. The animation style is distinctively different to the traditional style of Disney animation, but still has a vibrancy and often times insane nature to it that works well to the film's advantage, and moves in such a fast paced manner that helps to compliment the film's humour which, though does consist of it's moments of eye rollers, is decent at keeping a wit to it that slides in, at the very least, some jokes that are clever enough to warrant a smirk. The song numbers are one of the film's core strength, all of which provide such memorable and catchy tunes that, with such a variety, viewers will not be able to get out of their heads for hours, especially the film's title number which sticks out in particular as the highlight. The story serves as kind of a modernized twist on the story of "Pinocchio" which can be considered one of the film's strengths while also one of its weaknesses. When the story is kept focused on the main plot line of Spot and his quest to become a boy, it's quite well done and actually does a good job at discussing themes of science vs nature, and the dangers of unrealistic goals. However, and admittedly makes more sense knowing it's based on a television show, seems more fittingly as an episode of the show rather than a feature film because the film also spends a lot of time on unneeded filler that departs too deeply from the main story, and feels added simply to make it the length of a standard feature film, and the film's incredibly short running time can support this claim strongly. Filler is not necessarily a bad thing, and even here it isn't horrible, but it distracts too much from the main story and allows less time to focus on the ultimately more interesting concepts that the main plot represents. Another issue is with the film's characters who ultimately seem to be either forgettable, somewhat annoying, or relatively pointless in the overall course of the film. The exceptions to this are protagonist, Spot, played by Nathan Lane who does carry some charm and likability to make the audience interested in seeing him progress and grow as an individual, and the film's villain, played by the amazingly talented Kelsey Grammer, who has this unexpected nature to him that makes him quite a lot of fun to watch. I also do have to give some credit to David Ogden Stiers whose voice is almost completely unrecognizable in this, albeit as kind of annoying as it can be.

Final Thoughts: As a film I grew up with, it's easy to get held up on the nostalgia factor of it and talk about how strongly it meant to me as a kid and such. But looking at it now through the eyes of an adult, it does still manage to work quite well on its own. Though the story easily gets sidetracked and it is quite a short watch, the animation is still smooth and popping with colour, carrying a share of decent visual elements, has a variety of song numbers, all that are energized and fun to listen to, and some well written jokes, all of which ultimately help prevent it from being insufferable to view. If your looking for a good film to show children, this may be an amusing choice that you yourself may even find yourself sitting along with. It's zany, and crazy for all the right reasons...

But you may just want to make sure you have another movie prepared when this one inevitably ends rather quickly.

Rating: 7 Pretty Boys That Want To Be A Rooster In A Henhouse Out Of 10