Trailer:
“Have no fear, Underdog is here!”
The first question we need to start out with is….did we really need a live action Underdog movie? Did anyone really want one? Now I’m sure I could find a bunch of people who would have been all too happy to get an animated film but I guarantee you they weren’t looking for this
I will say outright that I don’t really care for these live action talking animal movies (Homeward Bound and Babe not included). Personally every time I see one I think…..why didn’t they just animate this. It would have looked less silly. Underdog falls into this category.
The story pretty much is straight foreword and takes every opportunity to rob elements from better, more established superheroes such as Spider-Man all the way down the list to Superman’s iconic flight with Lois Lane. Hell, Disney even has to rip off itself by including a Lady and the Tramp scene! You see it wasn’t enough to have every superhero cliché, it also had to have every dog movie cliché as well.
The movie opens with a young beagle being trained as a police dog. So from the first frame the film is already unbelievable. Why in gods name would a police academy trail a beagle as a police dog? Then again this dog is a screw up so maybe the film supports that sentiment.
Anyways the dog ends up getting kidnapped off the street to be used in a mad scientists scheme to create a superhuman serum. He begins by testing on dogs and the result is the accidental creation of Underdog…or at least the powers of Underdog. So our little beagle hero escapes to be found by wannabe Bill Murrey (James Belushi) an ex-cop turned security guard who adopts the dog and names him Shoeshine. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, right.
Even worse the poor dog now has to hang around an annoying teenager who without a doubt was probably pulled from one of Disney’s back channel TV shows. The kid is kind of unlikable and never really develops to a point where he isn’t.
Shoeshine meanwhile is voiced by My Name is Earl actor (Jason Lee) who only seem to get jobs in animated animal movies these days. For those of you missing my reference I was talking about the Chipmunk movies. Another raping of my childhood.
He kind of phones in the vocal performance and the film relies too heavily on Underdogs inner monologues. So much that it begins to get annoying. The there’s the fact that it sounds like Earl’s voice, which makes me think of the TV show. Pretty much he was brought in to do rapid-fire jokes, 2% of which are actually funny.
The only real relief I go from the movie was from Patrick Warburton, perhaps best known as the voice of Kronk in Emperors New Groove. Coincidentally he is playing the exact same character here as the mindless minion to the far less funny villain. And a note to filmmakers…. midgets usually aren’t too menacing of villains. They’re made all the less menacing when they tell bad jokes and are morons. I like Peter Dinklage but this is far from his most flattering performance.
The film also suffers from the pacing. It is marketed like a superhero action comedy but it isn’t until the halfway mark that Shoeshine even becomes Underdog. Then again Spider-Man did the exact same thing sooooooo…….maybe they were taking direction from that. I’d have to assume because there isn’t one original idea in the film. The only props I give it is having music that sounds like it belongs in a corny cartoon with each song being a variation on the name Underdog.
I’d comment more on the animal characters but I did my best to forget them. Especially the evil dogs in the films unfulfilling and stupid climax. Yet in the end though it may feel tedious it was aimed at kids of about six years of age. For that target audience they will enjoy it just fine even if the parents may wish to bash their head on a wall.
FINAL RATING: 2/10- (20%)
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