kingkasaduo

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