Starring: Will Arnott, Chris Bridges, Natasha Lyonne, Stanley Tucci, and Jordin Sparks
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 92 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2018
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This British-American comedy is about a solitary Rottweiler police dog, called Max, and his keeper, Frank. They go undercover at the world’s most exclusive dog show to stop animal smuggling.
Max has anger issues, and works for the New York Police Department. Frank is an FBI agent, and the two of them are instructed to work together.
The film has caused some controversy. It was re-released following the cut of two scenes, interpreted by some parents in the US as “normalising child grooming”. The distributor made the cuts and apologised to all those who may have thought that the original version of the movie sent an inappropriate message. Australia is seeing the version that has been cut.
The plot of the movie shows a baby panda, Ling Li, being kidnaped by traffickers after they steal her from a Chinese zoo. Agent Frank’s (Will Arnett) mission is to stop them. To do so, he is paired with Max, a talking Rottweiler, voiced by Chris Bridges, and they infiltrate an invitational dog show at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, where Ling Li is to be sold. Max and Frank are forced to work together. They are hostile to each other at first, then a relationship develops between them, that eventually wins the day.
At the dog event, Natasha Lyonne grooms animals and also has a dog in the show. She works with Frank to train Max to look respectable. Max doesn’t like parading around like the other dogs. He is used to working alone, and Frank can’t really understand what he is saying anyhow.
The plot line has traffickers using animal shows as a front. The plan is to sell Ling Li at the dog show to rich animal collectors, who “want to stock their own private zoos”, and Max competes in the show to maintain his cover. At the show, Max mingles uncomfortably with other dogs that include a failed papillon champion (voiced by Stanley Tucci), and a friendly German Shepherd dog from Australia (voiced by Jordin Sparks). Max eventually loses the competition, tracks the traffickers down, and becomes romantically attached to the “best dog in the show”, which is Natasha’s dog.
The scripting of the movie is very adult in tone. The dogs make bawdy jokes, and the dialogue is often crude. We see animals mainly talking as if they were adult humans. On the positive side, the film mixes digital effects with clever footage of trained dogs. The dogs are real, not animated, and the film combines live-action actors with talking animals in unusual ways. The movie, however, is directed clumsily. All the time, one thinks of another movie which does everything a lot better. Specifically, it lacks any of the brilliance of “Best in Show” (2000), which showed dogs and humans engaging with each other to offer biting, satirical comment on the political hypocrisy of people who participate in animal events.
This film’s target is not satire, and it searches for comedy in blunt and obvious ways. It shows Max progressing in the competition by passing a test where he has his rear-end inspected by the judges – a scene which makes it plain where the objectionable material was cut. The film’s final message is to “learn to trust people who see the world in different ways”, but by the time that message comes – and one can’t help querying its relevance to what one sees on the screen – the damage is done.
This film has been classified as PG with a warning there is mild violence. But there is no hint of other tricky content in its classification advice, which seems unwise. This movie has been directed to appeal much more to adults than to children, and it is a film that is not suitable at all for family viewing.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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