Dude, Where’s My Dog? (2014)

Directed by: Stephen Langford

Viewed On: Amazon Prime

 

General Summary: Dog appears. Dog leaves. Fart jokes happen. Dog appears again. Dog eats invisibility formula. Fat jokes happen. The children look for their dog. I beg for the sweet embrace of death.

 

Dude, Where’s My Title Ripped Off From?

Riding high on the totally relevant and not at all dated reference to the classic Dude, Where’s My Car?, Dude Where’s My Dog? Is…actually not really a rip off or even all that similar to the plot of the Ashton Kutcher movie. It’s just an excuse to make a “funny” title that could be a reference to a movie that’s….I haven’t seen Dude Where’s My Car? in more than a decade, so I don’t really remember it, but I can’t imagine it’s worse than this movie. Spoiler alert: This is probably the least enjoyably bad dog movie I have seen thus far into the Dog Days of Summer.

Dude, Where’s My Plot?

Dude, Where’s My Dog? starts with footage of someone offscreen playing fetch with our dear, dear dog during the opening credits. After roughly 30 seconds of playtime we switch to a “dog POV” camera angle with a few dog sound effects added to complete the illusion. The dog POV lasts for MINUTES? HOURS? DAYS? and is accompanied by what I believe to be an original song that describes what the plot of the movie is. Maybe this was an act of mercy by the filmmakers, you can just listen to the song, understand the plot and then you don’t have to watch the rest of the movie! We briefly see our dog friend again, just in time to do a jump cut to a woman in a car.

 

Dude, Where’s My Laboratory Safety?

This woman mildly terrifies me. Her eyes are wild and she gesticulates wildly while driving, but we can see the road and although there are other cars around, no one is driving poorly or cutting her off or honking at her so I guess she just has a bad case of road rage. She quickly makes her way to a “science lab” that she works at which looks like something out of a highschool play (the tables are clearly plastic folding tables with tablecloths put on over them and every inch is covered in science beakers partially filled with color water) and meets a woman in a labcoat who rushes to combine the ingredients that road  rage woman brought with her with a beaker of unknown substance. They remark on how this “needs to get done now” and that there is “no time” but they never really say why, and then they combine the two liquids. The resulting solution fizzes and road rage woman declares, “It worked”, which seems a little premature, unless of course the goal was to get a fizzing liquid into a beaker. If that is the case then it worked perfectly. Apparently that isn’t the goal as lab coat lady tests it on a…dirty tennis ball, which is an item I always have with me in labs where I do secret government testing of impossibly valuable concoctions. The tennis ball disappears and this is declared a success. The two are justifiably ecstatic at the news and lab coat lady informs road rage lady that this is a classified project and that she must tell no one. Lab coat lady calls her military contact and we get a shot of the insanely suspicious janitor, who is mopping the floor while super important chemistry is being done, eyeing the vial of this potion.

 

Dude, Where’s My Onenote Characters?

We meet our children and learn their two qualities. Blond child is a paranoid conspiracy theorist and Belcher…..well, maybe you can guess what his shtick is. They have a brief character introduction, complete with burp jokes (yay), and then we go to blond kid’s house where his mother berates him for not doing his dishes “from breakfast this morning”. That is in quotes because there are 9 dishes/plates/bowls and 3 cups on the counter. How much damn breakfast did this kid eat?!? So his mom berates him for his lack of responsibility and declares that he must wash the dishes (fair) and that she must “teach him how to do this”(confusing). Does the kid not know how to wash dishes? Dad is played by Kevin Farley, the brother of the late great Chris Farley. No, Kevin is not funny. But that may not be his fault. Chores are done. Bad jokes are made.

 

Dude, Where’s My Magic Lawnmower?

So kid mows the lawn and passes out in the yard, presumably from heatstroke, where he is joined by girl, who gets into a conversation with him and informs him that his lawnmower is still on. She turns it off. The kid should really have been more impressed by this seeing as: 1) the type of lawnmower he was using should have turned off as soon as he stopped holding down the bar attached to the handle and 2) she turned it off by turning a knob on the base of the mower that WASN’T A KNOB. She just grabbed a static bit on the mower and the lawnmower sound effect stopped. Blond kid fails to recognize her reality warping powers and invites her to join his neighborhood watch group for the night. She declines. During this watch the blond kid and belcher spy on the neighbors and witness a minute long scene of the suspicious janitor failing to perform acts of wacky physical comedy in his driveway. The girl made the right choice to not be here to witness this shame. Then the two kids are called over for breakfast.

 

But…the earlier scenes took place in the afternoon and blond kid was mentioning the investigations that they do happen at night. And we see them doing the investigation. Were these kids sitting on a couch looking out the window for 12 hours? We finally see the dog for 5 seconds until he is replaced by that dog POV cam again.

 

Dude, Where’s My Multiple Felonies?

Then everyone is at the breakfast table in their pajamas so….I guess they did stay up all night. A neighbor stops by and tells blond kid’s parents that this kid (whose name is revealed to be Ray) that he SNUCK INTO HER HOUSE AND PLACED A LISTENING DEVICE. They are mad at Ray for “eavesdropping on the neighbors” but not for COMMITING A SERIES OF ACTUAL CRIMES. I don’t know much about parenting but it seems like this kind of behavior warrants more of a response than just telling the kid to do more chores.

 

Dude, Where’s the Dog? (No, seriously, where is he?)

So there may be something about this film that you may have picked up on at this point:  there are almost no scenes with the actual dog in them. Counting the opening credits, this dog has, as of the 15 minute mark (oh god this is only 15 minutes in) been in less than a minute and a half of footage. This is not a dog movie. This is a movie composed of terrible physical comedy, insufferable child actors, and out of place wacky sound effects. All of these combined make for one of the most miserable viewing experiences I’ve ever had. And there is an hour left in the movie.

 

Dude, Where’s My Set Design?

So the scientists secure the vial of invisibility potion in their lab by storing it in a safe that looks inexplicably like a common household washing machine and the suspicious janitor guy steals it by opening up the safe….by using the DIAL ON THE WASHING MACHINE AND PRETENDING IT IS THE SAFE DIAL. At this point I just had to get up and do something else for an hour or so. I could not deal with how little this movie cares about being a real movie. No, scratch that, I couldn’t deal with how little this movie cares about being a movie about dogs. If “Dog” is in the movie title and the cover of the movie has a wacky picture of a disappearing dog in sunglasses on it then there should be a sizeable amount of wacky dog shenanigans in your movie! Also the dog never wears sunglasses, but I wasn’t even really expecting that to ever happen in the movie. This is a movie about a bunch of little shits who get in stupid adventures and I am going to focus from here on out only on the dog parts because this is the Dog Days of Summer and not the Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Children and/or One Dimensional Fat Joke Children Days of Summer.

 

Dude, Where’s My Responsibility?

So now the crook has the vial of invisibility potion and Ray has to take his dog to the vet because he is very irresponsible and needs to learn some damn discipline. Ray immediately messes up and his dog escapes, running into the crook’s house and instantly devouring the vial of invisibility potion. The dog disappears instantly and doesn’t return until the very end of the movie. But don’t worry, there is plenty of physical comedy and vomit jokes and fat jokes and  threats of child abuse to keep us occupied while the dog is gone! They eventually lure the dog out with hamburgers, in a sequence that takes something like 40 minutes to actually accomplish, and all the children are immediately kidnapped by a cadre of inept villains.

 

Dude, Where’s My Dog Murdering Device?

The villains’ plan is to MURDER THE DOG IN FRONT OF THE CHILDREN AND SIPHON ITS BLOOD SO THAT THEY CAN USE IT TO ISOLATE THE INVISIBILITY FORMULA. And this isn’t a secret, they loudly announce to these children that they are going to murder this dog and there ain’t a damn thing they can do about it. There is nothing they can do…..all hope is lost…until Ray tells Belcher he must perform his forbidden technique to save all their lives. Belcher is fearful of releasing his awful powers on an innocent world but eventually relents and proceeds to expel the loudest, smelliest fart that has ever been farted in order to incapacitate the kidnappers.

 

Dude, Where’s My Satisfying Conclusion?

The kids escape with the help of some friendly FBI agents and are brought home where their invisible dog just becomes visible again because they needed the story to be over. And that is pretty much it. Then all the kids go to the mall. Because that was the real point of the plan. So Ray can be responsible enough to go to the mall with his friends. And the last few minutes of the movie is the three of them walking around an outdoor mall. That’s it. This entire plot happened because a twelve year old really wanted to go to the mall with his friends.

 

I deeply apologize to anyone reading this right now. Because now you know this movie exists and you can never free yourself from the burden of this knowledge.