The Shaggy Dog (2006)

(If this is your first time on this blog, I ask you to read my About page first! Thanks!)

Disney’s The Shaggy Dog franchise is an interesting one. Starting with 1959’s The Shaggy Dog and followed by 1976’s The Shaggy D.A., we then received two television films, 1987’s The Return of the Shaggy Dog and 1994’s The Shaggy Dog. Finally, we received the third theatrical film which served as a reboot of the franchise, 2006’s The Shaggy Dog.

Directed by Brian Robbins, the film has a reputation for being incredibly bad, but is it though? Let’s take a look at 2006’s The Shaggy Dog!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

The film begins with a military operation of sorts in Tibet wherein American soldiers have been tasked with capturing a Bearded Collie named Khyi Yang Po. Why? Apparently, this dog has been alive for 300 years and the people behind this operation wanna know the dog’s secret to longevity.

Who are the people behind this operation? It happens to be the pharmaceutical company, Grant & Strictland, led by Dr. Strictland, played by Philip Baker Hall, and run by Dr. Kozak, played by Robert Downey Jr..

Dr. Strictland is an elderly man confined to a wheelchair and he’s hoping his geneticists can crack the code to the dog’s longevity so as to help him as well as to make money.

Meanwhile, Dave Douglas, played by Tim Allen, is a district attorney fighting a case wherein a high school social studies teacher, Justin Forrester, played by Joshua Leonard, has been charged with breaking into Grant & Strictland and setting fire inside it. He denies setting the fire, but claims that Grant & Strictland are doing abominable animal experimentations and must be stopped. Dave doesn’t believe him, of course.

This causes tension at home since his daughter, Carly, played by Zena Grey, is one of Mr. Forrester’s students and an ardent supporter of animal rights. She’s actually protesting outside Grant & Strictland with a bunch of other students supporting the cause.

Dave also has trouble finding time for his family as he works so much. He’s married to Rebecca, played by Kristin Davis, and also has a son, Josh, played by Spencer Breslin. Rebecca tries her best to talk to Dave about spending more time with his family, but something work-related always comes up between them.

That day, however, Carly and her boyfriend, Trey, played by Shawn Pyfrom, break into Grant & Strictland looking for evidence of the animal mutations. That’s when they bump into Khyi Yang Po who has escaped from the geneticists’ lab. They take his presence as proof that Grant & Strictland is doing animal testing, but realize it’s not really proof of anything besides a dog being found on the property.

Nevertheless, Carly takes the dog home with her, much to her father’s disappointment. She doesn’t say where she got the dog from, but Dave has always had a dislike for dogs. The dog, which Carly has named “Shaggy”, even bites Dave. Unbeknownst to him, some of Shaggy’s DNA enters Dave’s bloodstream.

The next day, Dave starts behaving weirdly. He’s scratching behind his ears, lapping his cereal from his bowl, and even growling. This leads to his court case going amusingly awry! Well, it’s amusing to us, not to the judge, Judge Claire Whittaker, played by Jane Curtin. He leaves early though saying he’s not feeling well.

He heads to the animal shelter where they sent Shaggy to earlier as he suspects Shaggy’s bite had something to do with his strange behavior. He’s even able to hear and understand the other dogs’ barking! This is when he turns into a Border Collie himself.

Once he realizes what’s happened, he’s horrified and runs home where his children are. But, of course, they assume him to be Shaggy who’s escaped from the animal shelter and can’t understand him when he speaks as they can only hear him barking. He tries to reveal his identity to them via spelling out words with Scrabble tiles and typing on the computer, but each attempt is stopped before he can actually finish.

While as a dog, he gets to know his kids more. For example, he realizes that Josh is purposefully flunking math so that he can be kicked out of the football team as he’s no good. His dad wants him to be part of the football team, but he personally has a thing for musical theater. Dave also realizes how his kids and wife can always depend on him to never be there. It makes him realize how his life has been going.

Later that evening, they put him to bed in the garage. He awakes in the middle of the night as himself and goes back into his own bed, happy that he’s no longer a dog. The next day, Rebecca asks him why he came home so late the night before and he tries to explain that he was turned into a dog, but of course, she doesn’t believe him.

As the day goes on, he realizes that he still has the dog symptoms including having a long, lagging tongue and a predilection towards chasing cats regardless of who gets in his way.

This happens to be the night of his anniversary dinner with his wife, so he shows up with roses, but of course, Rebecca thinks he’s Shaggy. He’s incredibly saddened when he sees how sad she is and how she’s considering this to be the end of their relationship.

Later that night, he breaks into Grant & Strictland as Shaggy and finds the mutant animals that have been created due to the animal testing. He also witnesses Dr. Kozak injecting Dr. Strictland with a serum turning him comatose. Dr. Kozak is tired of being second banana to Dr. Strictland and wants to take over the company.

Dave leaves, but Dr. Kozak hears him. He then watches the security video footage and sees Dave transform into dog and puts two and two together. Back home, Dave (as Shaggy) tries to tell his kids about his identity again using the Scrabble tiles and this time, he’s successful!

Dr. Kozak’s geneticists kidnap dognap him though and take him back to Grant & Strictland. He manages to escape though while rescuing all the other animals. Together, they take his car and drive down the highway to get to the courthouse where he’s told his wife and kids to meet him. With all the traffic, he has to do part of the journey as Shaggy.

Outside the courtroom, he transforms back into Dave while his family watches and explains everything. He apologizes to them as well for all he’s done in the past. After that, he enters the courtroom and exposes Dr. Kozak and reveals the truth about Grant & Strictland. Dr. Kozak himself has started showing canine symptoms since Dave (as Shaggy) bit him earlier.

Judge Whittaker rules in favor of Mr. Forrester, Dr. Kozak is taken into custody, the mutant animals are given a home, and Dave celebrates with his family in Hawaii.

And that was The Shaggy Dog! Honestly, I didn’t think it was a bad film at all! It was way more enjoyable and funny than I remembered. Yeah, the overall plot can be seen as silly, but this movie could have been a lot sillier than it was! Surprisingly, it had a lot of heart to it!

Tim Allen and Robert Downey Jr. gave really great performances! The others, not so much. Maybe Spencer Breslin was ok, but nobody else really had that much screentime.  The dog was trained amazingly well! I literally thought it was a character rather than a dog that was trained! You could tell that some of the CGI was fake, but it didn’t bother me that much.

I do have some criticisms though. This version was different than the previous versions as there was no ring or chant that transformed the main character into a dog. Rather, he transformed into a dog randomly when doing dog-related things. There also was no explanation as to how the original dog got to live so long, not even a bad explanation. We don’t even know what happened to Dr. Strictland afterwards. I also felt the ending was a bit prolonged and could have been like 10-15 minutes shorter.

Besides all that, I really liked this film and it’s my favorite of the three theatrical The Shaggy Dog films! This is probably the highest praise anybody’s ever given this movie!

So, my final score for this film is 30/35 = 85.71% (B) !

The next review will be posted on March 19, 2024.