The Amazing Wizard of Paws

The film screened to over 1,000 kids and adults at the Sedona International Film Festival and the audience loved it! IMDb requests that I type ten lines of text to get this review submitted. I don't have ten lines of stuff to type, but maybe by talking about not having ten lines then IMDb will print this. I hope so, because I don't want to have to write an essay every time I see a movie and want to post a review on IMDb. Ten lines of text is a lot. I still haven't typed ten lines and I am exhausted! It still won't let me submit so here I am typing more and more lines. Still not at ten lines. Whew this is exhausting. I've never written ten lines in my life, but IMDb is insisting I do it.

This is a mostly pleasant family movie, one appropriate for the entire family, though a few parents may be concerned about some minor details. It is kind of scary at times, and there is the loss of a parent (which is handled about as gently as it could be) but there is nothing particularly harmful.

Will Spencer is quite good as 12-year-old Bobby and while there is sort of a formula here, this movie offers plenty of surprises.

Jacob Whitkin does an impressive job as both the psychiatrist and the man who looks like Merlin.

Numerous annoying inspirational songs from different genres show up from time to time. There was one song even I could like. I would describe the style as somewhere between Karen Carpenter and Feist.

The visual effects are pretty impressive but not groundbreaking.

It's pretty obvious more than one dog is used for Ozzy, and that some of the dogs may not be real. In fact, Ozzy generally looked kind of weird and unrealistic. Just use your imagination.

The ending is not the expected one but it is quite satisfying.

It's a good family film with nothing really harmful.

I'm honestly stunned that this script got approved and was actually made into a "movie"! Outside of the terrible acting from basically every cast member the story was incredibly weak with more holes in it than Swiss Cheese! The special effects looked like they were done by a high schooler working on a class project. As the movie progresses (if you can even call it that) it looks like the cast and crew started giving up on the movie and just threw random clips in and used non experienced actors to play small roles. This is very obvious in the Million Dollar Talent Show segment. It's almost too hard to watch! I can't image this movie doing well at all unless the budget was $10,000 and someone forced a bunch of people to go see it. Hopefully nothing like this ever gets made again!

Terrible CGI and special effects: Check Meandering plot: Check Blatant filler scenes: Check Bad acting: Check BONUS POINT, Actor trying to impersonate a more famous actor: Check Ridiculous set-up: Check

On their own, each of the above is excusable. They can even occur in good films, and some of them can even aid their film if done correctly. However, when stacked up on each other like they are in this film, they result in a bad film. Watch it if you enjoy laughably bad films.

Postscript: A lot of people will defend bad children's films on the basis that children enjoy them. This is not an acceptable excuse, it either implies that children should be left alone to watch films, or that parents should be made to watch bad films. This negligent attitude to children's cinema is why studios produce films like The Emoji Movie, and why we now have a generation of cinema-goers that pays to watch Transformers films.

The only explanation for the events of this movie is that the dog is actually a demon and just fully messing with this poor kid. Or that this kid is just deeply delusional. Either way this was a wild movie to watch while drunk. Its terribly written, terribly acted, and terrifying when you have no clue what's going on at any given moment.