My Magic Dog (1997)

Directed by John Putch

Viewed on Amazon Prime

 

Summary: A boy with a dead mom has to make sure his evil Aunt doesn’t get custody of him. But when that isn’t happening he has to play matchmaker for his step-father! Also he should be way more concerned about the custody thing than he is.

 

Oh God Not Again

So while I was perusing the fine selection of quality dog-based films featured on Amazon video I noticed something that instantly caught my eye. One film in particular featured cover art that depicted a boy kneeling next to a dog that was in the process of turning invisible. Still reeling from my exposure to what may be the worst “film” I have seen so far for this blog, “Dude, Where’s My Dog?” I had no choice but to investigate this alternative disappearing dog film to compare the two while the first was still fresh in my mind. This looks like the perfect magical counterpart to the ‘science’ based disappearing dog in the previously mentioned movie, so let’s jump in!

LAW DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY.

We start off with some lovely establishing shots of a nice suburban park with plenty of extras enjoying the lengthy opening credits sequence that is there to make sure the film hits 90 minutes. After we’re done establishing that the movie takes place in a quiet suburban town we arrive at the home of Toby and his step-father Chet. Specifically in their garage as Chet is trying to find something amongst the assorted junk that everyone with a garage manages to accumulate. Chet eventually finds a lockbox that he was looking for but he does not have the key to open it, so he has Toby strike it with a baseball bat until it pops open. It seems a tad unwise to open a box full of important stuff with brute force, but hey whatever is in the box might not be that valuable. Chet opens the box and says, “Here it is, your mother’s will!” This raises so many questions! Why was the will in this box? Why wasn’t it with a lawyer? And things get even worse when they establish that the mom died TWO YEARS AGO. Why wait so long to look for this incredibly important legal document? I am no expert but aren’t wills typically read pretty quickly after someone dies so that everyone knows what will happen to their worldly possessions and affairs?  So then Chet continues by saying, “It’s a good thing we have this will, it is going to make the custody hearing in two days simple.” Which raises EVEN MORE QUESTIONS! What happened in those intervening years? Did someone else have custody of Toby? Was Toby living with Chet the whole time? Did the courts just learn that Toby’s mom died? Was Chet hiding the body until he found the will? If not, then why is the hearing happening now, after two years have passed? I know this was made in the 90s, but some rule of law should still be present. And this all is established by the first full scene, which isn’t even over yet!

 

GET YOUR GARBAGE FOOD OUT OF HERE, CHET!

After finding the will, Chet declares that it is lunch time and he will make something for Toby to eat. Toby, the darling child that he is, says he won’t eat whatever Chet makes because Chet can’t cook. Chet can’t cook lunch for a suburban white kid in the 90s? Chet lacks the culinary capabilities to put a sandwich together or throw some bagel bites in the oven? What do they eat? How have they survived for two years if Chet’s cooking is so horrible that Toby refuses to even entertain the idea of eating it? Chet instantly relents because he is trying to be a cool step dad and gives Toby some money to get them a pizza. Toby and his dog, Lucky, leave to go get this pizza from their favorite Italian restaurant and we cut to the establishing scene for Toby’s Aunt Violet, a lady who smokes and has a small dog that she carries with her, both of which are proof positive she is 100% evil.

 

Evil Aunt Violet and Her Surprisingly Reasonable Complaint

Aunt Violet is sitting in her car, somewhere, expositing to no one that she needs custody of Toby so that she can steal all the money that her father, Toby’s grandfather, has stated that he will get in the grandfather’s will. It is pretty mean to do those things but I kind of see where Violet is coming from when she says that her father has specifically written in his will that only a male relative can inherit his money. That is both horrifically sexist and quite possibly legally challengeable. I could understand painting Violet as the antagonist if say, the grandfather made Toby the sole beneficiary in his will because Violet already is rich and Toby just lost his mom so he wants to make sure he is taken care of in the event of the grandfather’s death. Violet is still definitely the villain, but why was it written this weird way? So Violet is suddenly at Chet and Toby’s home and establishes that she is there to spy on them and try to find incriminating evidence for the custody hearing. Toby has no interest in interacting with her and then Chet tells her to leave. Great scene.

 

Delightful Mid 90s Stereotypes!

Toby and Lucky make their way over to this restaurant and are accosted by excessively generic 1990s kids movie bullies. They don’t like the way Toby talks to Lucky and are about to beat him up but Lucky intervenes and stops them. So Toby and Lucky make their way to La Casona, an Italian joint, to meet Vito, the delightfully stereotypical proprietor of the establishment, who is played by Russ Tamblyn of Twin Peaks fame, who is just slumming it. Vito greets the boy and dog, his thick put-on accent not alarming them in the slightest, and hands them their pizza. He also gives a pepperoni to Lucky, because damnit, that dog is actually pretty cute.

 

Aunt Violent And Her Criminal Enterprises

So as this is happening, Aunt Violet drives to the park and sees the two bullies shaking down a kid for money. Impressed with how they could rough up a child half their size, she hires them to steal the lockbox that has the will in it from Chet. Now you probably have some questions. Did Violet see the lockbox? Does she know what is in it? Does she know that it is in the house? Were these things established in the previous scene where Violet and Chet interacted? The answer to these questions is NO. I have no idea how Violet knows about this lockbox or what treasures it holds. Maybe there is a deleted scene somewhere that explains this, but nowhere in the film is it established how she knows any of this. She just has to know this in order for the movie’s plot to proceed in the way they want it to. For the princely sum of $200 the pair take Violet up on her offer to cross the line into becoming hardened criminals, so they take her key to Chet’s house, which she just has for some reason.

 

Chet Destroys Wrestling Then Confronts a Woman Going Through His Trash. Must Be Love.

While horrid conspiracies are forming, Chet and Toby are blissfully unaware. The writers remembered that Toby should probably be sad about his dead mom, so Toby sits in the living room watching a home movie of the family. Chet tells Toby that he shouldn’t “wear out the tape” and proceeds to mention that he and Toby won’t be able to hang out tonight as Chet has to meet with potential business associates about television shows, as Chet manages a local TV station. Toby is dismayed and says, “but we were supposed to go to that fake wrestling show tonight!” Christ Chet, don’t you care about kayfabe? Toby’s mom is dead, at least let the kid have some sense of wonder in his life. After crushing Toby’s hopes and dreams Chet leaves, leaving the lockbox in plain view, and encounters a woman going through his trash. Like all sensible parents, Chet asks this woman to babysit Toby after he confirms that she is in fact a new neighbor and not a homeless person. The two seem to hit it off but the mood dampens when Phoebe mentions ‘Herman’, someone who Chet assumes to be her husband/boyfriend. Phoebe agrees to babysit Toby and says that this won’t, “Ruffle Herman’s feathers.” I’ll stop you right here. We all know Herman is a bird. It is incredibly obvious for a movie like this. But this, ‘is Herman her boyfriend?’ thing goes on for half the movie and it is painful. So after this awkward interaction Toby and some girl that we’ve never seen before but we assume is his friend agree that Chet and Phoebe belong together and they should work to make that happen. I gotta say, that scene really comes out of nowhere.

 

Time to Point and Laugh At A Fat Woman!

So while Phoebe is babysitting Toby and teaching him magic we see the meeting that Chet is in, which takes place at La Casona. Chet is having dinner with a lady while she tells him about the dance program that she wants to put on his station. But you see it’s funny, because she’s fat, and she is eating food! At a restaurant! HaHaHa. Height of comedy! Even more yucks are had when Vito makes fun of her for wanting more bread! Wanting more bread at an italian restaurant, what a classic bit of comedy! And then, she’s trying to seduce him, which is, okay, that is unprofessional and she shouldn’t be doing that, but it’s also funny because no one wants to have sex with fat women! HaHaHaHa. In between segments of this beautiful scene of laughing at fat people we see that one of the neighborhood bullies is a pizza delivery guy who delivers a pizza to Toby and Phoebe. Chet, I’m not trying to tell you how to parent,  but maybe you should learn how to cook so your son doesn’t eat pizza for every meal. There’s some tension between Toby and the bully but the real point of the scene is that the bully spots the lockbox in the middle of the entryway.

 

Is This Where the Magic Happens?

Later, after everyone has fallen asleep, including Phoebe(!), the bullies turned burglars show up to steal things. They get greedy though, and try to steal things in addition to the lockbox, which causes one of them to trip and make noise, awakening Phoebe and alerting everyone in the house to the presence of these robbers. Lucky is furious that these strangers would enter his home and he gives chase, biting one robber’s leg and damaging his pants. Lucky follows the burglars out and at this point I had remembered that the dog is supposed to turn invisible at some point in the movie. This seemed like a key opportunity for the dog to become My Magic Dog and turn invisible via magic. Maybe one of Toby’s magic kits had some real magic in it and Toby tries to use it to help Lucky with disastrous consequences? Maybe the lockbox itself was magic?

 

DEAD DOG ALERT!

Well, nothing like that happens because Lucky gets hit by a car and dies. And let me tell you, seeing this kid try to act sad is one of the genuinely funniest things I have seen on film. The guy who hit the dog with his car is just awkwardly standing behind him, the police have gotten there instantly to witness this scene, Phoebe is trying to comfort Toby, and Toby is just sitting there looking at this dog like it was a broken yo-yo. I laughed embarrassingly hard as this kid tried to react to his dog dying and I feel mildly ashamed at how much I enjoyed that. But no time for shame because as soon as this dog dies a giant glowing halo (imperceptible to our characters) encircles the dog and a beam of light shoots off into the sky! Then we get some nice slow motion mourning as the icing on the cake.

 

Dead Dogs, More Pizza and Personal Ads

The evil Aunt Violet has the will, the bullies get paid and Toby waits for the sweet embrace of death as he has nothing left to live for with both his mom and dog dead. Seriously, the next time we see Toby he talks to his neighbor girl friend and tells her that he has no intention of leaving his bed again. But somehow his friend manages to get him out of bed and to meet her at La Casona, the only restaurant that exists in this universe. While there they eat pizza, of course, and discuss Chet’s love life. I’m serious. Sam cheers up Toby by trying to brainstorm ideas with him about how to help his father find love. But wouldn’t you know it, old Vito knows just how to get the ladies and he has a personal ad put in the local paper, and he even pays for the thing, in the hopes that maybe seeing his father in love will help Toby overcome all the tragedy that his life has been thus far. Also there is a weird scene at home where Chet calls a lawyer but it turns out the lawyer is in Greece. They try to make a pun about Chet not understanding that the guy is in the country Greece and not a screening of the movie Grease but uh, it doesn’t work.

 

Pasta Talk! Also Lucky Comes Back As A Ghost And I Cannot Escape These Movies

So Toby prays for his suffering to finally end and his prayers are immediately answered! While Toby sleeps, a beam of light, like the one that shot out from Lucky’s rapidly cooling doggy corpse, snakes into Toby’s bedroom and explodes into a ball of light as Lucky appears before him! While this emotional reunion is happening, we cut to Chet watching a sample tape that has a show pitch on it. This show is called “Pasta Talk” and features two guys discussing which pastas are their favorites. Their discussion quickly breaks down over a disagreement about what rotelle is and the two get into a fistfight. This is a terrible idea for a show but a brilliant Tim & Eric sketch. So back to the plot, Toby is thrilled that his dog has returned to him! Toby plays fetch with Lucky and is so happy have his dog back! Then Lucky starts talking to Toby.  With his mind. Because I just can’t get away from these goddamn telepathic dog movies. I had no idea there were so many of them and I just keep accidentally finding them! This was not planned, I just wanted to watch another movie about an invisible dog! Coincidentally, the original title of this movie is not My Magic Dog, but rather My Ghost Dog. I assume they changed the poster so kids wouldn’t know the dog dies horribly before they got their parents to rent the movie.

 

Ghost Dog Investigator! I’d Watch That Show.

So the next morning, Toby is walking downstairs and speaking to Lucky, just thrilled to have his canine companion back with him. Chet assumes that Toby’s grief has caused him to imagine that Lucky is still alive. Toby tries to tell Chet that Lucky is there but Chet can’t see Lucky, a fact that Lucky then chimes in on to say that only Toby can hear or see him. Thanks Lucky! Maybe you should have mentioned that ten minutes ago so Toby doesn’t look like he’s lost his mind? After these shenanigans, they decide to investigate the mystery of who burgled the will so that they can stop Toby’s pending custody problems and wind up finding a small shack in the woods that’s located in the same direction that the burglars ran away to after the heist. Toby and Sam search it but don’t find the lockbox, frustrated by this lack of progress, but emboldened by the shack, they decide to stake it out to see who it belongs to. This plan is instantly abandoned as the kids decide that it is about time to try and help Chet find a mate again.

 

Chet Teaches Toby That Casually Slurring Women Is A-OK!

Toby takes a call from a woman responding to the personal ad that they placed and arranges a time for the date to happen, while deepening his voice to sound like Chet which of course works. Once the lying has started it just can’t stop as Toby tells Chet that he has to meet someone for a “parent teacher conference.” At a restaurant. That day. Chet is a little skeptical about this but Toby says that the school is already closed so he can’t call to confirm. So of course Chet meets his date, Greta, at La Casona, the only restaurant in the country. Things are immediately awkward because Chet starts asking questions about Toby’s schoolwork and Greta doesn’t know what he is talking about. In any sensible scenario this would be the end of the sequence because Chet would say, “Isn’t this a parent-teacher conference?” and then Greta would say, “No, I thought this was a date!” and then MAYBE after that they could laugh about it and talk like normal people. But because this is a movie it takes the entire dinner for Chet to realize something is up. And that is just a s well too, because how else would we know that Greta is another delightful stereotype, this time of an intense German woman. Greta is the Germanest German who ever Germaned. And she is from East Germany, which makes her double extra German. They eventually work out what happened and the next scene has Chet at home agrily telling Toby that what he did was wrong and he says this line, “You lied and embarrassed me and that WEIRD NAZI WOMAN.” It is so quaint to look back on the 1990s and see a simpler time when Nazi was an unambiguous slur against Germans and nothing more.

 

Ghost Dog Investigator! Episode 2 & Also Toby is a Wizard.

Getting back to the actual plot of the film, we join Toby and Lucky as they continue to do the work that the police should be doing. They find themselves in the park where Toby is beset by his bullies once more. They now harass him for talking to a dead dog, they say this in jest but they have no idea how right they are, and the slightly dumber bully says, “If you’re going to talk to someone dead at least talk to Abraham Lincoln.” I have no idea what the joke there is supposed to be, but at least we know this guy isn’t a Confederate sympathizer. While racking his brain to try and figure out what this bully’s insult means, Toby notices a rip in the ankle of one of the bullies’ pants and concludes that it must have come from the bite that Lucky gave him while he was trying to escape. Toby uses this moment to make his move, he tells the bullies that he knows it was them and they must return the lockbox that they stole. They don’t take him seriously so Toby uses Lucky’s ghost dog powers to make it look like his is moving a baseball around the park in a scene that is seriously just a minute and a half of a baseball flying around people. This convinces the bullies that he is a wizard and has placed the ‘Curse of Lucky’ on them for as long as they don’t return the lockbox! The bullies promptly leave so that the movie can get back to the REAL plot, Toby trying to get his dad dates.

 

MOVE OVER MAIN PLOT! SIDE PLOT COMING THROUGH!

We catch up with Toby hanging out with Phoebe behind her house, it’s never explained why he is back there,  Once he is back there though it is finally revealed that Herman is a bird and that Phoebe is single and, possibly, ready to mingle. Toby takes this as all the evidence he needs that Phoebe and his dad are destined to be together and conspires with Sam to forge notes from each of the people asking each other out. This plan works flawlessly, but then they realize that they might figure out that this is a setup when it comes to who is paying for this date, as they both think the other person asked them out! Toby enlists the help of his good friend Vito, who jovially tells Toby that they can, “work something out.” Hard cut to Toby washing dishes in La Casona. Credit where credit is due, that’s somewhat amusing. Phoebe and Chet arrive at La Casona, the only restaurant the residents of this town are legally allowed to visit, and the audience has to quickly come to terms with the fact that this movie is now about Toby trying to get a new mom and NOT about the adventures of a boy and his ghost dog. Vito tells the couple that their meal is free because, but let’s stop for a second and discuss the possible reasons for why your meal could be free at a restaurant. Maybe Vito could say they’re his millionth customer? Maybe he could say that he’s so happy to see them there as a couple that he is comping their meal? No, Vito tells them their meal is free because he heard about Chet’s recent liver replacement surgery. It’s weird and not a joke and I don’t know why he said that. Maybe because it is a goofy thing to say? It doesn’t really matter though, as the date goes on and proceeds to be horrendously awkward for both parties.

 

Toby, Why Are You So Interested in Your Step Dad’s Love Life?

Even as Toby and Lucky try desperately to get them to speak to each other nothing seems to help bridge this gap, and at the peak awkward moment we cut back to the bullies’ woodland hideout. We have a one minute long scene with the bullies so that we remember they are in the movie and then BAM, we are back at home talking about Chet and Phoebe’s date. I wish the movie was about dogs again. So Chet tells Toby that he didn’t think he had any real chemistry with her on the date and they were just really awkward and not talking about anything. Toby, not getting any hint that Chet is giving him, directly begs Chet to go on another date with Phoebe. Toby even flutters his eyelashes during this scene as the camera awkwardly zooms in on him to show what is happening. It is an odd sight. With Toby’s odd obsessive demands, uh, I mean ‘gentle prodding’ working, Chet calls Phoebe to ask her out on another date and he is thrilled when she says yes so I guess he really does like her? It feels so strange to be doing this while the main plot of needing to get the will back before the custody hearing is still unresolved and the custody hearing is in ONE DAY. But I guess Chet figures that if he loses custody of his kid he can at least make a new one with Phoebe.

 

Vito Triumphantly Returns! Also I Laughed At A Joke The Movie Made

So Chet goes to pick Phoebe up at her house and learns when he arrives back home, because if they aren’t going to La Casona they can only eat at home, learns that Toby has decorated the house with the help of Vito who I guess took the day off from working at his restaurant to help? Chet doesn’t know what he will say on this date but Toby has him covered by putting the most obvious ear-piece on Earth in his ear so he can feed Chet lines. Because who knows more about romance than twelve year old boys? I shouldn’t complain too much about the ear-piece though, because it leads to probably the most genuinely funny moment in the movie. Toby doesn’t test the volume levels of the ear-piece, so when he first uses it it is so loud Chet immediately shrieks, causing Phoebe to do a spit take, before he remarks, “THIS FETTUCCINE IS REALLY LOUD!” I’m not certain if the person who wrote this movie is occasionally genuinely funny or is just a master of anti-humor but that joke got me. The rest of the scene, which is seriously ten minutes long at the point in which most movies would be trying to ramp up the plot, is just them eating with a few more jokes thrown in, nothing too groundbreaking.

 

Sprinkle Some Home Alone In There.Just To Be Safe

So in case you forgot the main plot of the movie is as of yet still unresolved. The bullies still believe themselves to be cursed and it is one day before the custody hearing. So Toby and Sam decide that this is the day that they must ramp up the cursing and convince these bullies that they will forever be tormented by a hellhound should they not comply. Their methods are doing this shockingly have nothing to do with Lucky using his actual magic powers to scare the bullies. Instead, Toby and Sam set up Home Alone-style traps and pranks to frighten the bullies by dropping cold spaghetti on them and dousing them in seltzer, and scaring them by having Sam dress up in an obviously fake Halloween costume quality monster mask. These things are all much more frightening than the ACTUAL GHOST DOG MAGIC that they were using before! So the bullies admit to the cop (the same one from before) that they stole the lockbox but don’t know where it is because it was hidden by Violet.

 

Chet Assaults a Police Officer!

The date of the custody hearing has come up and Aunt Violet and the Guardian Ad Litem meet Chet and Toby in the driveway to their home before they all go to court. Violet then produces a forged will and says that Toby has to come with her because the will says that Toby’s mom wanted Violet to be his caregiver and the GAL agrees that the will is probably legally binding and that either Toby goes with Violet right now or Chet can dispute the will and Toby will be placed in foster care. It is really nitpicky for a movie like this, but GALs have NOWHERE NEAR that kind of power! All they can do is make recommendations to a judge! They still would have to go to court and present all this as to the judge and make their official recommendation, but we can’t go to the courthouse because that would require another set and we don’t have that kind of money. So then the one cop in town shows up because Violet calls the police and a huge struggle breaks out with Chet and Phoebe actually trying to fight this cop to stop the separation. This is supposed to be sweet I think. So at this point Toby figures out that Violet stole the will and has Lucky use his Ghost Dog magic to find it and bring it back. He does and everything is fine! Except that we have to have the sad scene where Lucky has to go back to heaven because he finished helping Toby. Toby struggles to emote during this tragic sequence but ends up being much happier when his friend and family all pitch in to get him a puppy. Named Luckier. So everyone is happy except Lucky who is probably in dog hell because he never gave his heart to Dog-Jesus.

 

I Enjoyed This Movie But I Don’t Think Ed Wood Would Approve.

My Magic Dog is, unsurprisingly, a pretty bad movie. I went on at length about how the movie doesn’t understand law or restaurants or human reactions to grief but that’s kind of what makes this movie great. Unlike a lot of the other crap that I watch this was shot on film, by an actual production studio, and is not a scam or an attempt to trick the audience (except maybe the name change, but that happened years later). All that considered, this is one of the better dog movies that I have sat through, definitely the best technically and up there in its insane approach to storytelling. Also there is a weird Ed Wood joke in the credits where they list the set dresser and then ‘Cross Dresser…….Ed Wood.’ Bizarre stuff. Oh and the credits list the old title of the movie, My Ghost Dog, because who could bother to change that?