Quelle vie de chien!

There seems to be some confusion about exactly what place in film history The Shaggy Dog has. First and foremost it is not Walt Disney's first live action film, but it is the first live action big screen comedy that he did. It is also the first film that Disney did with Fred MacMurray starring.

For MacMurray this was a big film. His career was in the doldrums at that point and this film brought him to his final phase of his career as the star of family oriented comedies. He got a television series, My Three Sons, after this and that together with the Disney films kept him steadily working for the next fifteen years.

Though MacMurray is the star along with Jean Hagen as his wife, the film's title role is played in part by Tommy Kirk. Kirk is a young teenager with a lot of angst and an abiding interest in the space program. So much so he constructs his own rocket in his basement and it has an unscheduled launch to open the film. A generation later, this bit was copied in Family Matters by Steve Urkel.

Anyway he's got a healthy set of hormones as well and a rivalry with the smooth talking Tim Considine down the street. Both are hot to trot for Annette Funicello, but when Roberta Shore shows up with father Alexander Scourby, both go after her as well.

Roberta's the only weakness in the film. For someone who is foreign, she has one cheesy accent and at times just drops it altogether. She's also got a large shaggy dog named Chiffon.

Anyway while at a museum young Mr. Kirk gets a hold of an enchanted ring and repeats a spell that causes him to enter the body of the neighbor's shaggy dog. And he discovers that in fact Scourby and his confederates are spies.

What follows after as Kirk periodically changes from talking dog to teenager is still pretty hilarious. Fred MacMurray gets a lot of laughs as the man who gets the credit for exposing the spy ring which son Kirk can't really claim.

James Westerfield, one delightful character actor in everything he does, makes the first of three appearances as Officer Hanson, the much put upon patrol cop in this, The Absent Minded Professor and Son of Flubber. Best moment in the film is when Kirk as The Shaggy Dog steals Westerfield's police vehicle in pursuit of the villains.

I'm still amazed at how well the ancient special effects still work in this film. Disney took some meticulous care in doing the scenes with the dog. You really do think The Shaggy Dog is driving those vehicles and not some guy dressed in a dog costume. Good thing it was a large Shaggy Dog though, a Chihuahua would not have worked as well.

Still working well today.

Up to the point of this movie, the Disney Studio had had plenty of experience in live-action film production, but it was chiefly in the UK, where they used the considerable debt-credit that England had run up during the war years to produce things as Treasue Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Their initial foray into U.S. live-action production was Davy Crockett on Disneyland, the Mickey Mouse Club's TV serials, and then Zorro, followed by several mini-series on Walt Disney Presents (Texas John Slaughter, Elfego Baca, Swamp Fox). The Shaggy Dog was initially planned as a TV series to follow Zorro as something independent from the weekly Disney hour. You can see vestiges of TV production in almost every aspect of this film, from the post-production foley work on entire scenes to the subdued performance of Kirk (largely reprising his Joe Hardy role from the Hardy Boys serials) and MacMurray's scenery chewing. Not that either of these things were unusual in family movies of the time, but we tend to be more forgiving of them on old TV. (The book the concept originated in was written by Felix Salten, who created Bambi and Perri, a couple of Disney animal characters who did pretty well for themselves.)

The Shaggy Dog was one of the first movies I saw as a child and I've always held a great affection for it, even while recognizing all of its flaws. The concept here is what I liked, and I believe, had the same cast (remember, this is the year before Fred MacMurray and Tim Considine were cast in My Three Sons) starred in a TV series based on the concept, we'd now be looking back fondly on another TV classic of the golden years rather than a rather middling Disney comedy. I still feel that it might work better as a Disney Channel series than a movie starring Tim Allen; part of the reason I liked the original is because the star was a kid only a couple of years older than me. What I don't need in a new Shaggy Dog film is even PG humor, and without it these days, there isn't much of a market for it in theaters (or even as a series on any of the major networks). It's a kids' super-hero concept that requires a kids' venue, and, sadly, that isn't the big screen. Perhaps, however, if the film does well, someone in the studio will realize that it would work better on a weekly basis...about fifty years late.

You know, sometimes we write these commentaries about films as if they were somehow works of art to be dismantled and put together again through analysis. Sometimes a movie like this is just a hoot. It's the age old story of a couple guys lusting after the same girl/girls. Here Annette Funicello is the first and then Roberta Shore (whom I had all but forgotten). Tommy Kirk's nerd doesn't have much of a chance with these foxes against the handsome Tim Considine (who was on My Three Sons and then tossed aside as if he never existed), so he finds a way, through a magic ring, to get inside the body of her dog. Of course, then it's sight gag after sight gag, boy/dog stuff. It is done with a delicate touch because these kids could act. Don't take this stuff too seriously. Just sit and enjoy.

The "Wild & Woolly" DVD edition of 1959's THE SHAGGY DOG (and some product reviews and posts found here) claim this film is the "first live action movie ever produced by Walt Disney!" I guess all those other live action features Walt produced PRIOR to THE SHAGGY DOG (such as 1957's OLD YELLER or 1954's Academy Award-winning 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, among others) didn't count? (One comment posted here stated that 20,000 LEAGUES, like TREASURE ISLAND, was one of the films done for Disney in England because of studio funds tied up there. Not true; when not filming on location, 20,000 LEAGUES was shot on the sound stages at the Disney Studio in California...information supplied to me by the studio while I was researching & writing a magazine article on the making of the film.) I can see how some reviewers might make such a mistake, but for the claim to appear on the packaging that was approved by the Disney staff takes some serious explaining. (As does the differences in running time for the two versions of the film, with the B&W version being the full cut of the movie, while the colorized version is missing about 10 minutes of material.) Don't get me wrong,this is a great comedy and well worth having...it just deserved a bit better treatment for its fans.

"The Shaggy Dog" is a delightful live-action comedy, the first of many to emerge from the Walt Disney Studios during the late 50s - through the early 80s. Although firmly rooted in the late 1950s the film has many charms, mosty noticeably its innocence, pure situation comedy and perfect pitch performances by a cast of film veterans. Is the film a classic - no. Is it worth watching, by all means. It's a wonderfully entertaining Disney family film and it holds up quite well, even for today's jaded audiences. If you can't find the appeal in this film well, then your mature beyond all hope. Enjoy!