Dogs have been a huge part of my life, and as a child, we always had one., from a collie named Shannon that I loved to death to a Blue Mural named Misty. Having a dog (or any pet) for years makes them a part of the family, and it truly hurts when they pass away. When dog shows come on TV, I can understand why people get so passionate about the competitions.
“Show Dogs” is the new film directed by Raja Gosnell (The Smurfs, Scooby Doo) with Will Arnett (The Lego Movie, Hot Date) and the voice talents of Alan Cumming (X-Men 2, Goldeneye), Stanley Tucci (Spotlight, Big Night), Natasha Lyonne (American Pie, Portlandia), RuPaul (The Brady Bunch Movie, EdTV), Shaquille O’Neal (Scary Movie 4, Steel), Gabriel Iglesias (Coco, Magic Mike XXL), Ludacris (Furious 7, Crash), Omar Chaparro (Superfly, Stuck), and Andy Beckwith (The Infiltrator, Snatch). It is the story of FBI agent named Frank (Arnett) who is trying to retrieve a stolen panda which they think is going to be at the national dog show in Las Vegas. Frank meets up with a NYPD police dog named Max (Ludacris) who clashes personality wise with Frank, and the two go under cover as show dog/trainer in a dog show.
This film is bad on every level starting with the CGI animal mouth movements and other animal action. It is not as bad as some of the effects in films from the ‘60s and ‘70s, but it is close. The rest of the film showed Vegas well, but it was a bit over the top. It was like an ad for Vegas made by the Chambers of Commerce. I had no shining stars from an acting standpoint, and with half the cast being just their voices, they do OK, but some of them got a little annoying to me, not fitting the style of the dog for me.
There are some attempts at comedy, but they did not work. The plot is simplistic and runs about ninety minutes, but it is a family film, so I expected that. One part I hated is they wanted to do a bunch of pizzazz in this film that fell flat, like at the dog show where the dogs would come out to a room that looked like the highest price fashion run in Paris with photographers and a DJ’ It tried to look flamboyant, but let’s get real here: there would be no DJ blaring music or paparazzi doing fashion shots with bright flashes due to the fact that it would be cruel to and also scare the dogs. I know that I am not the target demo for this film, but I have seen many films that are not my demo so I can have the open mind, but this film. Plain and simple: I will not see this film again.