Raja Gosnell has some form in dog movies, as director of two Scooby-Doos and one Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Practice has not made perfect, because even in that less than auspicious group, Show Dogs is the runt of the litter.
In a set-up that feels left over from the 1980s, Will Arnett plays an FBI agent who is trying to hunt down an animal smuggler and Ludacris voices a dog who is somehow an NYPD cop trying to crack the same case. Together they go undercover at a dog show to find the culprit. Its world is messily established. It’s clear that humans understand dogs to be smart enough that they can be assigned police cases, but while we can hear the dogs talking, the film’s people can’t, so it’s not clear what the communication level is. It’s a high-concept that is not completely committed to, indicative of how slapdash the whole film is.
Arnett is a canny choice for the lead. He’s so effortlessly likeable that he can carry us through the most tired of jokes — and there are a lot — and seems never less than fully invested, no matter how bad things get. There’s some fun in the voice cast too, especially Stanley Tucci as a papillon who always seems on the brink of a hissy fit, and Shaquille O’Neill as Karma, a dog who remains zen whatever the situation.
It is, essentially, what you’d expect from a comedy about an undercover cop dog. Its comedy bar is low enough that a dachshund would barely squeeze under it and the script’s shortcomings are covered up with lots of shots of cute dogs doing not very much. You might ooh and aah at all the animals trotting around — you just might not laugh at anything they have to say.
