Underdog – DVD Review
Rating System
- Audio: 4
- Video: 4
- Goodies: 2
- Interface: 3
- Value: 3
The Movie
I’m just going to lay this out straight up front: unless you are the world’s biggest Underdog fan or accompanying a 10-year-old I can’t think of any reason an adult would watch this movie. It is a movie squarely targeted for young kids and barely pauses to acknowledge the adults that may get caught up in the collateral damage.
For those who don’t know, Underdog is based on a series of cartoon shorts from the 1960s starring in a somewhat inept beagle was super powers. In this live action remake, Jason Lee stands in for much of the ironic winking of the original cartoons man instead we get a pretty earnest straightforward superhero movie that just happens to star a dog.
Lee, currently starring in My Name is Earl on NBC, provides the voice of underdog, and if it weren’t for the fact that his narration makes parts of the movie feel like a very weird episode of that show, he actually does a pretty good job. The problem is that the story is straight out of the handbook of clichéd action-adventure for pre-adolescents.
Underdog as one of the less promising members of the Capital City K-9 unit and he flees the force after an embarrassing incident involving mistaking a ham for a bomb. Picked up as a stray, he ends up in the evil lab of Dr. Barsinister (Peter Dinklage), who is engaged in genetic experiments attempting to transplant features of animals into other animals. Of course things go slightly wrong and Underdog ends up gaining his superpowers and escaping the lab.
Still unaware of his powers, Underdog ends up joining the Unger household, which is dealing with its own problems as father Dan (James Belushi) and his son Jack (Alex Neuberger) are having trouble relating following the death of Jack’s mom.
Events unfold as everbody rediscovers the bonds of family and how to be comfortable with who they are. An evil plot involving Dr. Barsinister and his henchmen Cad (Patrick Warbarton as a bottle blonde) is exposed and dealt with.
There’s really nothing objectionable in the movie (the closest is a joke based on the implication of a fecal word but is never actually said) but it is played so broadly and with uninspired slapstick that it may be perfect for the younger kids but there are plenty of alternatives that will play to a somewhat broader age range.
The Goodies
Nothing too earth-shattering here, but they again highlight how the disc is targeted for children. The first item is deleted scenes. Or rather, two deleted scenes and one extension of a scene. These can be viewed with introductions by director Frederik Du Chau. These introductions make clear that they’re for children, as he explains in very simple terms why there weren’t included in the movie. At least I hope he was talking to children; I’ll have to be insulted if that is how he talks to people normally.
Also included is a making-of documentary hosted by Underdog himself. It is pretty much the standard behind-the-scenes interview stuff but while Underdog is telling things from his perspective, you can also switch to a “human” perspective on the same topic. There is some mildly interesting stuff on what it is like to shoot with animals and one bit showing the animal wranglers walking five dogs through a rehearsal, with the dogs needing to hit marks and move their heads in ways that will support the animation to be added later.
The blooper real is mostly dogs not doing what they were supposed to, but kids will probably like some of them.
A video of “Underdog Raps” as performed by Kyle Massey. Whether this is of interest likely depends on if you know who Kyle Massey is (one of the stars from That’s So Raven and frequent sight on the Disney Channel).
The final extra and a nice inclusion is the very first Underdog cartoon short. If you like what you see in that episode, you might want to consider buying the 3-volume collection that is hitting store shelves at the same time as this movie.
Video, Audio, and Interface
It is a basic solid transfer for both sound and the video quality. The weakness of some of the effects has nothing to do with the transfer quality but rather is a side effect of using real dogs blended with CGI. I imagine it is pretty difficult to get a dog to act like it is flying while trussed into a wire rig.
The main menu video is a short 30-second loop and the submenus are still images. One oddity (for me, I don’t use Disney DVDs as often as other MousePlanet writers) is that the video options are hidden in the Audio set-up submenu. Both the widescreen and fullscreen versions of the movie are on the same side of the disc and you have to select one in conjunction with an English, French, or Spanish audio track. For some reason, you can watch the movie in either format in both English and French but if you want Spanish you need to watch the fullscreen version.
The Final Evaluation
This isn’t a very good movie, but then young kids generally aren’t that discriminating. If you’re stuck watching movies with them over and over again you may want to avoid giving them a shot at this one since repeated viewing may eventually cause physical pain. But if you’re just using DVDs as back-seat entertainment then it is a bland movie that may find an audience with young kids.
