"SHERLOCK: UNDERCOVER DOG"
this 1994 movie has an incredible 1.7/10 rating on imdb. it's not quite worthy of such a low score, but it's pretty wonderfully bad, with a couple moments of shit film transcendence that make it worth your energy. the premise of this movie is that a talking dog named sherlock bones is on assignment on catalina island with his human partner. when said partner is captured by spandex-bedecked drug smuggling thugs, sherlock turns to the help of a young sad boy to help him solve the crime.
the character of sherlock bones is endlessly fascinating. we are never told why or how he can talk. at one point in the film, he tells the boy that he is 47. is that in dog years? was he at some point magically turned into a dog but is actually a 47-year old human? these questions are never asked or answered. the name of the film also raises some issues. is he undercover as a dog, or is he a dog that is undercover, and if so, undercover as what? sherlock bones has a scottish accent for some reason, even though he is clearly an interpretation of sherlock holmes (although he never sports the hat and pipe on the cover in the actual film; he does, however, have an eyepatch, which is never explained). my best guess is that after deciding that detective bones works for scotland yard (which is in london, and doesn't have much business investigating drug smuggling in southern california), they figured the dog should probably have a scottish accent. or really, a terrible, inconsistant attempt at a scottish accent, spoken at a bizarre, jerky pace to try to match up to a dog trained to open and close its mouth. this method of fake-dog talking is much preferable to the digitally-added moving mouths that they used in beverly hills chihuahua, which were deeply troubling.
the young boy sherlock turns to for help is on catalina to visit his "eccentric" inventor father, who is trying to sell a children's toy he created called the t.u.r.t. ("totally underwater robotic turtle"), which looks like something that might have been popular in the 1950's. the cast is rounded out by a kindly veterinarian, who becomes romantically involved with the dad (obviously), and her know-it-all daughter, who is employed as a tour guide at the historic catalina casino (there are no schools on catalina island: the children work). the children embark on a predictable variety of madcap adventures in order to bring down the criminals. like nite song, sherlock: undercover dog features young children fighting with armed, sadistic criminals. great fun.
like i said, this movie has some moments of pure transcendence. here is one of them (reframed by my poor cameramanship) wherein the two famlies get to know each other by making creepy horror music on spinning glasses:
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