It’s hot out, it’s almost officially summer, so it is time to start the Dog Days of Summer collection to give you all your dog movie reviews that you didn’t know you needed!

 

TW: This review of Show Dogs contains discussions of sexual violence.

“Show Dogs”

Viewed in Theatre

 

I cannot believe this was released in theatres. That was my first thought, my last thought, and most of my middle thoughts during my viewing of this film.

This movie is bad. That is not a surprise. Of course a movie made in 2018 that is both a talking dog movie and a buddy cop movie is going to be bad. There was no possible way this movie would not have turned out to be a failure, but what ended up being made was a stranger failure than I could have imagined. And that strangeness starts out with the opening scene.

Dog Based Confusion

We open with Max, who is shockingly voiced by Ludacris, observing a gang of potential crooks who may be involved in an animal smuggling ring that has stolen a poor, innocent baby panda. And no, I didn’t say Max and his human partner, I just said Max because Max is doing this alone. I know I don’t have to explain to you why dogs cannot be loner cops in real life, so I just assumed this was a movie universe where humans could talk to dogs or that Max was part of some special kind of K9 unit.

Max goes rogue (because he’s a loose cannon dog, on the edge) and chases the crooks as soon as he spots the panda cub, which is rendered in terrifying CGI. A big chase happens and the crooks get away, taking the terror-inducing panda with them. It is then revealed that Will Arnett (wearing a terrible fake mustache that I assumed he was wearing because he was ashamed of being seen in this movie) was a mole in the organization and was about to make a bust before Max jumped in and scared away the organization’s leader.

So, naturally we go back to the precinct and Will Arnett is furious that Max ruined an FBI sting. And then things get weird when we pan over and see the police chief’s dog reprimand Max for his actions, and it is soon established that humans can’t understand the dogs. So why was Max alone? Did no one explain to the writers of this movie that ‘police dogs’ aren’t actually badge carrying cops?

This raises so many questions about how these police dogs operate in this reality and none of them are even attempted to be answered. So predictably Arnett and Max are made partners but not before this beautiful scene unfolds before us.

Sloths too fast, Hands too slow

While Max is getting yelled at by Will Arnett, someone mentions a previous investigation  involving the abduction of a pygmy, three toed sloth. When asked why he didn’t recover the sloth, Arnett replied that the sloth was “very fleet of foot”. I was sure that this was some kind of buildup to a joke, but I was wrong. This, itself, was the badly delivered joke.

At the end of the film we see several animals that have been stolen as part of this smuggling ring, but we never see the sloth he talked about. I guess I just got too attached. Seeing a fast sloth could have made for a funny visual gag but that never gets delivered. At least we learn in the last scene that the sloth is eventually located and rescued, spoilers.

 

Plot? We don’t need no stinkin’ plot!

It is eventually revealed that the crooks are meeting in Las Vegas to arrange for a buyer for the previously mentioned bundle of CGI vomit…I mean panda cub. So Arnett and Max head off there to meet up with Mattie, a dog trainer played by Natasha Lyonne, who is their FBI contact. In between Arnett and Lyonne competing to see which of them is slumming it more by acting in this movie, they establish that the plan for locating these crooks is for Max to compete in and win this Dog show, thus making him a valuable target that will be stolen by the crooks. The FBI would then be able to locate Max through a GPS tracker in his collar (that those crooks would never think to take off) and solve the case. For the next hour all we see is Max training to get better at being a “show dog” and he gets into some wacky hijinks when he applies his police dog training to the show dog contests rules! Seriously though nothing plot important happens for close to an hour while we see Max consulting his newfound dog trainer, a former show dog champion turned street dog, and having a terrible romance with a lady show dog that he meets.

 

No laughing matter

I can’t put this off any longer. This movie has come under fire for a scene in which Dogacris (Luda-dawg?)  a.k.a Max, the dog who is voiced by Ludacris, must submit to a full physical inspection in order to win the dog show.

I was prompted to see the movie after noticing a news headline about the child-unfriendly messages present in this film. They weren’t wrong. After this movie was released, it was met with a barrage of parents complaining that it sent the wrong message to children about inappropriate touching from strangers.

 

The full inspection includes a judge grabbing Max aka Luda-dawg by his genitals (which is standard procedure for dog shows). However, Max the dog/cop is not comfortable with having this person grab his junk. Will Arnett assures Max that he can get through this invasive inspection by telling him to “not react and go to his happy place”… Hmmm…

 

Kids, if any of you are reading this (and I don’t know why you would be unless you love snarky reviews of niche horror and dog movies done by mediocre amateur movie critics) please know that you should completely disregard this movie’s advice. If someone tries to touch you in a place or way that makes you feel uncomfortable tell an adult who you trust as soon as you can. And for the love of god never take any advice from Will Arnett or you might end up acting in movies like Show Dogs.

 

I will say though, the only interesting thing that I saw in this movie was a result of this inappropriate dog ball grabbing. When the judge grabs Max by his…uh….dawgs, we see Max’s ‘happy place’. It is the most bizarre and experimental scene in the movie. Max and Will Arnett are dancing together in what looks like the vacuum of space with fireworks and stars in the background and the song “I Had the Time of My Life” is playing. The CG applied to make this happen is just horrendous and it looks like a video someone would make to parody a movie like this, its like watching a Tim & Eric sketch that was completely serious in its tone.

 

As a side note, I jumped the gun on this scene and thought a previous scene was the one being described by parents as being harmful to children. Earlier in the movie when Max is getting ready for his first dog show appearance we see one of the preparation methods is that Max must get a bikini wax. Will Arnett waxes a rottweiler’s genitals in this movie. I was sure this was the scene the articles were talking about because Max doesn’t want to do this either but Will Arnett just does it anyway as payback for the grief that Max causes him. And no, I’m not going to look this up to see if this waxing is a requirement for dog shows because I refuse to have “dog show bikini wax” in my search history.

 

Censoring the X-rated Show Dogs

 

Initially, the production company defended the inclusion of this scene by saying the physical inspection is standard procedure in dog shows (which it is)….but who cares about the integrity of dog show procedures in a children’s movie?

In the face of this mountain of logic, the production company agreed to reedit the movie to remove these scenes, and then released a new version to theaters. So, I am reviewing the X-rated version of Showdogs. A review of the PG rated version to come. Just Kidding. But it says a lot that the most interesting thing about this movie involved a dog’s testicles being grabbed.

 

Exciting Action Climax!

The worst thing about that part where Max gets his personal space invaded by a judge? MAX DOESN’T WIN THE DOG SHOW. There was literally no point for the story to focus on this aspect of the movie so much if he wasn’t even going to win the show anyway! Why was this movie so needlessly fascinated with dog balls?

So a different dog gets dognapped and they run around Vegas until they track down the bad guys to their warehouse hiding spot. Will Arnett tries to arrest the crooks but a fight breaks out and in this chaos the cage holding a poorly CGIed tiger that had previously been smuggled opens up. Why was this tiger being held there? Very early in the movie it was mentioned that this smuggling ring smuggled a Tiger….so why is the Tiger in Vegas and not the place that it was smuggled to? Do they just steal animals because they think their Las Vegas warehouse would look better if it was filled with exotic animals?

Anyway, there’s a big dumb punching sequence and Arnett and Lyonne team up to fight the dognappers. This brawl goes on for a strangely long time and I’m not sure if they were just trying to pad the movie or if Will Arnett was trying to establish himself as a rising action star. The dogs and the hellspawned panda cub are rescued but the bad guy manages to get into his small plane and fly off in the confusion of the scuffle. Arnett and Lyonne are disappointed he got away….until we see that the tiger that escaped its cage had, for some reason,  gotten onto the plane. The tiger proceeds to viciously attack the bad guy while the plane is in mid air, dooming both of them to painful flaming death. Except in the next scene they’re both fine. Somehow. I guess the Tiger mauled this guy and then landed the plane on his own? That is a movie I’d rather be watching.

 

Oh Please God Let It Be Over

This isn’t the end though as we have to wrap up all the loose ends of….uh….there aren’t really any loose ends honestly. But what better opportunity would they have to sequel bait? Arnett & Max team up one more time for some mission that I can barely remember and then the credits roll, releasing anyone unfortunate enough to be in the theatre.

 

Humor?

So I didn’t really get into it too much but this movie was allegedly a comedy. Most of the ‘jokes’ in the film were awful puns which I purged from my mind as soon as they were said so, unfortunately, I can’t relate any of them now. All the jokes that aren’t puns tended not to make any sense in context, for example, there was a big sheepdog type dog voiced by Shaq whose gimmick was the he spoke in koans and was nonviolent and so on. A fine setup for jokes but there was never a punchline. Every time he appeared on screen he would say something “deep” and then just leave, as if Shaq voicing this character IS the joke.

Another joke that makes no sense is that there is a pug voiced by Gabriel Iglesias and this pug loves sugar and junk food. If you’re familiar with the comedy of Iglesias then you may know that a big topic of his standup is his own weight (he’s the “you’re not fat you’re fluffy” guy) so the dog loves junk food…but the dog that he is voicing isn’t particularly heavy so it’s this weird meta joke that doesn’t make any sense in context. But the worst joke of the movie (aside from the happy place dog molestation joke) happened when Will Arnett was trying to re-infiltrate the smuggling ring by befriending one of the people involved in it.

This smuggler guy was interested in Max and wanted Max to spend some…er….quality time with his dog (who happens to be flamboyant and voiced by RuPaul). So Will Arnett has to decide if he is going to pimp out his dog partner (who we have already established has thoughts and feelings and does not want to do this) in order to get a lead on this case. In a kids movie. Arnett doesn’t go through with this, in case you were curious. But what is extra bad about this joke is the bizzare implications of celebrity voice actors influencing their characters.

When the smuggling guy makes the suggestion, Max is shocked by this dog’s flamboyance, appearance, and voice. For those of you who don’t know who RuPaul is, RuPaul is a famous actor/model/singer/drag Queen, and I think this dog is supposed to reflect that somehow in the same way that Iglesias’ dog reflected his onstage personality and Shaq’s dog reflected his big and mellow personality. I don’t know any other way to take this joke except by thinking that Max really doesn’t want to…’stud’… with a dog who is….outside of gender norms. This is so weird and out of place that I honestly have no idea what they were thinking when this was scene (or any other scene) was filmed.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Although nothing really funny happened in this movie I was always somewhat amused at just how incompetent every aspect of this production was. From jokes that are either nonsensical or disgusting to actors who would rather be anywhere else or to the early 2000s level CGI that gets presented as if it looked great, this movie was endlessly fascinating. I can’t really advise anyone to pay money to see this, but if you have the opportunity to see this without paying then I would really recommend it just so you can witness something truly shocking.