Pups Alone

This is like the dog slobber of family comedy: It's kind of cute and funny, but mostly it's all wet. It features an enormous cast of folks who look familiar but maybe haven't been working as much as they used to -- and it's not their fault this film is so underwhelming. It's just sloppily made. While the script has some laugh-out-loud moments, particularly for kids who love gross-out humor (a dog passing gas in the face of criminals is particularly memorable), it lacks logic. And the camerawork and editing are terrible. Swooping close-ups jolt viewers into discomfort -- not to mention, it kills the jokes. The editing is amateur at best: One scene plays the same cut three times, twice with the audio dropped out.

The funniest performance in the movie is Rob Schneider's as José, the Chihuahua next door. Many viewers are likely to find the things José barks out hilarious. But even though Schneider's wife is from Mexico and he's fully bilingual, this is a White actor -- one with a reputation for playing offensive roles, including characters whose ethnicities are different from his own (Bedtime Stories, Don't Mess with the Zohan, 50 First Dates) -- putting on a Mexican accent. Not cool. Elsewhere in the cast, Hollinger gets most of the screen time and is good enough that this role might just get him cast playing a dad on a Disney Channel series. The other standout is Keith David, whose eloquent charm almost makes up for the fact that his character fits the Magical Negro trope. As unoriginal as it is, Pups Alone might still have been OK, but the director clearly didn't care enough to put in the effort, allowing it to -- yes -- go to the dogs.