Movie Review: Underdog

Underdog (2007) 

Directed by Frederik Du Chau

Written by Adam Rifkin

Starring Jason Lee, Jim Belushi, Peter Dinklage, Patrick Warburton, John Slattery, Taylor Momsen

Release Date August 3rd, 2007

Published August 3rd, 2007

Was there any need to make the 60's cartoon Underdog into a big budget live action movie? I've heard no clamor or call. No one outside the official Underdog fan club has even thought of Underdog in the near 20 years since the last reruns were exorcised from TV screens. And yet, here we are with Disney dusting off this forgotten pop culture relic with visions of the family dollar dancing in the heads of Disney accountants.

I hope they got their money's worth because we, the movie-going public, certainly do not. This 88 minute cash grab is one of the most dreary projects to come out of the Disney company since the bastardized sequels of their Pixar and other animated properties. Underdog is a deeply misguided, mercenary effort where profit trumps good taste, and stock prices are calculating on box office returns. 

Jason Lee stars as the voice of Underdog a former K9 cop turned lab rat who, after getting zapped by some chemicals, develops super powers. Escaping the lab of the evil doctor Simon Barr Sinister (slumming Station Agent star Peter Dinklage), Underdog ends taken in by a security guard (Jim Belushi) and his troubled son (Alex Neuberg). Nicknamed shoeshine for his proclivity for licking shoes, Underdog slowly learns that he has powers before the boy helps him become a superhero.

No points for for guessing that the troubled boy is healed by his new best friend and that father and son are brought closer together as they are forced to team up against Barr Sinister and his henchman Cad (Patrick Warburton). You could guess how this plot plays out without having to sit through this mind-numbing cliché of family movie drivel.

The key to such a predictable plot is trying to reinvent, or at the very least dress up, your familiar elements with jokes, action or effects. Underdog fails in all three of those attempts. The jokes of Underdog are limited to eye rolling dog puns about what dogs like to eat, where they like to poop and how they interact i.e the butt sniffing joke you can anticipate well before it comes.

The action is even more lame than the jokes. Mirroring the equally painful family dog picture Firehouse Dog, Underdog is just a series of bad CGI talking dogs against ugly fake green screened environments. The action and the effects of Underdog are inextricably linked thus if the action is lame, the effects must be as bad or even worse.

Looking at the cast of Underdog you can't be surprised to see the name of Jim Belushi on the cast list. What is shocking and sad is the career destruction of Jason Lee. Yes, it's only his voice in the role of Underdog but nevertheless, you have to dock him a bunch of cool points for his willingness to utter such lame jokes. Worse yet, Lee will follow Underdog by starring as Dave in a live action Alvin & The Chipmunks. Ugh.

I've already heard from one former Jason Lee fan who has completely written him off now that he seems to be taking the Eddie Murphy path to the easy family movie paycheck. Even more desperate than Lee is Peter Dinklage who truly lowers himself to play the villain in Underdog. The man who became an actor to watch after his terrific performance in The Station Agent, is now flailing and gesticulating desperately as he tries to cover up this failure with wild gesturing.

I'm sure that someone thought that making a live action version of Underdog would be fun but most of the people behind this lame adaptation likely only saw dollar signs. There was no call for a live action update of Underdog. No large contingent of fans lying in wait for Disney to wake up and realize the property they held was so valuable. Like the brutal Rocky & Bullwinkle movie from a few years back, Underdog is not a cartoon that cried out for live action adaptation. Rather,Underdog is a 60's relic barely notable enough to require a DVD collection.

Even a straight to video launch would have been too much for this waste of screen space.

Movie Review: The Wild

The Wild (2006) 

Directed by Steve Williams

Written by Ed Decter, John J. Strauss, Mark Gibson

Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Belushi, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo, William Shatner

Release Date April 14th, 2006

Published April 14th, 2006 

For people familiar with the not so amicable divorce of Jeffrey Katzenberg from Disney, the new animated film The Wild is a bit of a humorous inside joke. A joke Disney, you can be sure, is not laughing at. Katzenberg was the number 2 man at Disney, right behind Michael Eisner, in the early nineties. He is said to have been responsible for relaunching Disney's moribund animation division by championing The Lion King amongst others.

When Katzenberg was forced out and ended up founding Dreamworks with Steven Speilberg and David Geffen, he had a bit of revenge on his mind. Hence, in his time as the head of Dreamworks animation an odd pattern of copying emerged.

In Katzenberg's first post Disney animated launch Katzenberg chose Antz to lead off the new Dreamworks division. An odd choice considering Katzenberg was well aware of Disney's long in development animated film A Bugs Life, courtesy of Disney partner Pixar.

From there the pattern continued, Disney/Pixar release Finding Nemo, D'works is out soon after with Shark's Tale. And then last year Katzenberg pulled the ultimate coup when he released D'Works zoo escape adventure Madagascar ahead of Disney's long in development The Wild, a picture that was in the planning stages late in Katzenberg's own Disney run.

The Wild is Disney's first foray into computer animation without the imprimatur of the geniuses at Pixar and thanks in part to Madagascar the film not only feels like a cheap knockoff it tanked at the box office like one too. Somewhere Jeffrey Katzenberg is smiling.

Kiefer Sutherland leads the voice cast of The Wild as Samson whose massive road has made him the featured attraction at the New York City Zoo. Unfortunately, Samson's son Ryan (Greg Cipes) can't seem to get his roar going beyond a weak meow. Having spent his entire life listening to his dad's stories about fighting wildebeests in the wilds of the jungle, Ryan longs to go to the wild himself to find his roar and capture some glory of his own.

Ryan gets his chance when he spots a cargo hold being loaded on a truck that he is certain is headed for The Wild. When Samson finds his son on a truck headed for the harbor he and his pals, including Benny The Squirrel (Jim Belushi), Nigel the koala (Eddie Izzard), Bridget the giraffe (Janeane Garofalo) and Larry the snake (Richard Kind) give chase and have a grand adventure in the streets of New York before commandeering a tugboat and taking off after Ryan to the Wilds of Africa.

The stories of The Wild and Madagascar are similar but not the same. Yet it cannot be denied that the creative team at Dreamworks was well aware of Disney's competing project which was in production even before Madagascar. Nevertheless most will see The Wild as a rehash of the story from Madagascar and they are not entirely wrong.

Both stories jump off from the premise of Zoo animals escaping their cage confines and heading out to adventure in the jungle. Both feature lions as lead characters, Kiefer Sutherland taciturn and authoritative in The Wild and Ben Stiller freewheeling yet neurotic in Madagascar. Both feature giraffes as second leads with Janeane Garofalo evincing a smart sexy giraffe in The Wild to David Schwimmer's laconic dopey giraffe in Madagascar.

The main difference between the two films is the switch from Chris Rock as an ascerbic energetic zebra in Madagascar and Eddie Izzard as the wildly improvised koala in The Wild. Otherwise the films play along very similar storylines.

Try to decide whether one of these two animated flicks is better than the other is really a question of taste. Madagascar appeals to fans of broad comedy while The Wild sticks closer to a family adventure vibe with Eddie Izzard providing the occasional comic jolt with his ad libbing.

I prefer Madagascar because I just could not buy the voice of Kiefer Sutherland as Samson in The Wild. All I could hear was Jack Bauer, Sutherland's iconic TV badas, coming out of the animated mouth of a lion. When Sutherland is called on to be playful or broadly comic he comes off as stern and a little angry. His line deliveries are staccato, forced and halting, not unlike Jack Bauer's tight lipped hyper authoritative line readings on 24.

Jack Bauer simply cannot play cute and cuddly and because of that I found The Wild to be more uncomfortable than humorous.

Directed by special effects specialist Steve Spaz Williams, best know for Jim Carrey's cartoon histrionics in The Mask, The Wild has uniquely realistic look that definitely looks complicated. The hard work of the Disney animators is all up there on the screen for all to see in the couple of hundred thousand individually drawn hairs on each of the animal characters.

Complicated however, is a far cry from elegant or beautiful and like all other non-pixar computer animated films, The Wild pales in comparison to the remarkable works of art that are The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.

Even without the thievery of Madagascar I would not be recommending The Wild, a family animated adventure that is lacking in big laughs and adventure.

Movie Review One Way Out

One Way Out (2002)

Directed by Allan A. Goldstein 

Written by John Salvati 

Starring Jim Belushi, Jason Bateman, Angela Featherstone 

Release Date May 29th, 2002 

Published December 9th, 2002

It doesn't happen very often but occasionally a straight-to-video title will actually start with a good concept but fail in execution. The new straight-to-video movie One Way Out starring James Belushi has an interesting concept, a story that if better executed with better acting, directing and budget, could have been a pretty good movie or at least a good episode of NYPD Blue.

In One Way Out Belushi is hotshot cop Harry Woltz, one of those "makes his own rules" rogue cops screenwriters write with their eyes closed. Harry wears designer suits, drives nice cars and has a very serious gambling problem. Harry is deep in debt to a pair of club owning gangsters. Instead of breaking Harry's legs the mob guys offer him a choice, he can pay them something in the tens of thousands or they can kill him, or he can help them kill their business partner. Why doesn't Harry simply arrest them? Because they have threatened to have their bosses kill Harry's partner if he squeals.

One thing that makes the job a little easier for Harry is he doesn't have to carry out the murder himself. The mobsters want Harry to use his knowledge of crime scene investigation to help another guy, John Farrow (Hogan Family star Jason Bateman, stop laughing I'm not kidding) the husband of the business partner, get away with murder.

So Harry and John begin to set a plan in motion that should make John the lead suspect in the murder but leave no actual evidence. The plan is actually quite fool proof as long as John holds up his end. Unfortunately for Harry, John screws up and Harry becomes more involved in the plan than he wanted to be.

Complicating matters is Harry's partner Gwen (Angela Featherstone), who has been assigned to investigate the case. With no evidence available, Gwen begins to suspect John while also falling for him. Knowing that John actually killed his wife and seeing his partner falling for a killer has Harry in a tight spot, when suddenly an anonymous phone call draws Harry into the case as an investigator and then a suspect himself.

The concept of a cop in debt to the mob helping to stage a murder isn't bad and is efficiently executed. Unfortunately director Allan A. Goldstein lacks the ability to frame the story in any interesting way. The film's biggest problem is Jason Bateman who is completely overmatched. Bateman is a joke as the master manipulator, who outwits cops with his charm and good looks. That he was cast in this role is chuckle-inducing so you can imagine how unintentionally funny the performance is.

Belushi for his part is efficient but not memorable. He hasn't done any real interesting work since the David Lynch mini series Wild Palms.

I liked the idea behind this film. Touch up the story to make it a little more dramatic and logical, recast the three leads and up the production value and you might have a pretty good movie. But this version of One Way Out is just no good.