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Good dog, bad movie
[Photo: Warner Bros.]
David Arquette, Bob the dog and Angus T. Jones in See Spot Run. |
By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 1, 2001
A canine pursued by hit men because of his drug-sniffing prowess? It's all part of a flick that should be consigned to the doghouse.
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It might be helpful, in terms of explaining the extreme, lingering stench of See Spot Run, to think of the movie itself as a dog, a real dog. Spot, to put it kindly, is the kind of old pooch that doesn't know a single new trick. This smelly mutt is able to do only one thing well: Play dead.
Let's back up. See Spot Run, sloppily orchestrated by rookie filmmaker John Whitesell (whose television credits include D.C., Jack and Jill, Providence), was conceived as a project for Martin Lawrence, a comic actor with the ability to do wonders with the right material. But David Arquette wound up replacing Lawrence in the role of Gordon, a hapless postman whose chief ambition in life is to outwit the unfriendly dogs on the Bleeker Street portion of his suburban mail route.
It gets bleaker. Gordon's weapons in this long-running struggle include a Supersoaker water gun and a slingshot loaded with dog food. "Don't go postal on me," advises co-worker Bailey (Anthony Anderson, of Me, Myself and Irene), an African-American sidekick whose sole purpose seems to be to provide ethnic flavoring to this bland fluff. He does so by dropping references to rappers and encouraging his pal in bouts of slang and street dancing.
Several pointless plot meanderings later, poor, idiotic Gordon is burdened with two big problems: He's stuck babysitting the son of the upwardly mobile, leggy blond next door (Leslie Bibb), while she goes off on a weekend business trip. Can you say Big Daddy? And to match the cute little boy (Angus T. Jones), there's Agent 11, an FBI superdog recently escaped from a witness protection program. Murdoch (Michael Clarke Duncan of The Green Mile), a massive, hulking FBI agent pining for his lost canine partner, is hot on the trail.
Spot, as he comes to be known by Moron Boy and the kid, is the target of an assassination scheme masterminded by a Mafia kingpin (screen vet Paul Sorvino) angry about the drug-sniffing agent's success in costing the crime family more than $22-million. The bumbling hit men are played by mob-guy regulars Joe Viterelli (Analyze This) and Steve Schirripa (television's The Sopranos).
Who knows what thrilling twists lie ahead?
We'll tell you. Not much of anything: See Arquette (the Scream trilogy, Never Been Kissed) do an awful variation on the laid-back surfer-cool character perfected by Owen Wilson (Shanghai Noon). See Gordon slip and slide in dog poop, crash his mail van into a fire hydrant and get tangled in a giant wad of helium-inflated packaging plastic. See the would-be assassins repeatedly fumble their assignment. See us run. Woof.
See Spot Run
- Grade: D-
- Director: John Whitesell
- Cast: David Arquette, Angus T. Jones, Michael Clarke Duncan, Anthony Anderson, Paul Sorvino, Leslie Bibb
- Screenplay: Stuart Gibbs, Craig Titley, George Gallo and Dan Baron
- Rating: PG; bathroom humor, slapstick violence
- Running time: 95 min.
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