User reviews

AAARGH!!! Nobody told me that this U.S. version had been re-recorded WITH AN American CAST!!!!! Lines were definitely changed. The American cast always said "Carousel" instead of "Roundabout". I think that some references to "sugar" were changed to "candy" or "caramels".

The actors kept from the UK version of this movie (released under the title "THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT") were Judi Dench as the narrator, Ian McKellen as Zebedee and Kylie Minogue as Florence. All the other roles were substituted with the voices of American actors.

The kid who speaks Doogal (why did they change the spelling of this from "Dougal"?) is high pitched and annoying. Substituting the voice of Whoopi Goldberg for the voice of Joanna Lumley (Ermintrude the cow) was a bit strange. But what I thought was unforgivable was substituting the voice of Jon Stewart ("The Daily Show") for that of Tom Baker ("Doctor Who" (and many other roles)). This was the role of "Zeebad" the villainous enemy of Zebedee. There's even a scene where Zeebad and Zebedee have a wizardly duel, like Saruman and Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. But instead of Tom Baker facing Ian McKellen, it's Jon "The Daily Show" Stewart!!! Find a way to see the version with the British cast. Skip the one with the American cast.

Karl

if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, right? well...I have ONE nice thing to say...some of the pop culture references in this movie were fun.

Beyond that. This movie is atrocious. I was hoping for something fun; a good solid kids movie, complete with solid moral grounding.

All my son learned from this movie is, "if you make a mistake...LIE. take other people with you to solve your problem and let THEM do all the work (while you lounge around), make things harder for them, and then YOU take all the credit for their hard work."

I dislike SharkBoy and Lavagirl, but through all its eye-jarring visuals and mind-numbing plot...at least it has some morally redeeming qualities, and my kid walks away having learned a little something about doing the right thing, no matter how hard.

Doogal has NONE of that....

lazy movie. lazy plotting. lazy acting. lazy script. lazy thought.

If I never see this movie again, my life will be better for it.

I'm always looking for a cute movie for my 6 year old son and the characters in the Doogal movie trailer looked adorable. Not to mention a cast of Chevy Chase, Jon Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg, how could one go wrong. Boy was I disappointed. It was terrible. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie this bad. Not only did the characters lack any personality whatsoever, the plot relied solely on corny one-liners referencing countless movies and television shows in every scene. Most of which, children didn't understand and parents just didn't find funny. The theater was empty and those that decided to stay until the end hardly laughed. Do yourself a favor and pass this movie up. Don't even buy the DVD.

Rip-off plot was not funny at all. The dog was completely selfish and unlikeable. The voices(including the English ones left in the film after the dubbing) have no inflection and tone. The talent of Whoopi Goldberg was completely wasted on this "dog" of a movie. You know that the movie is bad when as an adult the only thing mildly amusing is a moose passing gas. There is no fun in this movie, my kids (age 4 and 7) were bored and they are not picky. Valient was a five star masterpiece compared to this schlock. It was an hour and a half of my life I will never get back! I will not go to another Weinstein animated film unless it has topped the charts for weeks - this is not even straight to video quality. Do not waste your hard earned money on this. Even if the kids are dying to see it, wait until it hits video stores next week and put it on while you are vacuuming.

I've found that attending movies with my kids is almost always great fun. Movies that I wouldn't be caught dead watching otherwise are somehow not so bad when the kids are there. In one case, a movie I had seen by myself and been completely bored was actually a lot of my fun watching with my 7 yr old son later.

Doogal has no redeeming value whatsoever. The celebrity voices provide zero added value - Jon Stewart is at best, OK. The rest are definite negatives which I have never seen before. The plot is transparently thin, the characters are extremely weak, and not a single laugh out loud in the entire theater, although it was almost empty on the second day.

Not even a DVD rental. KEEP AWAY!

I have been seeing films in theaters for over 50 years and this is only the second time I actually walked out during the movie. I am a big fan of quality animated films, from the early Disney up to the more recent Ice Age, Hoodwinked, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, etc., and the wonderful Miyazaki films. I thought, with this cast it has to be good. I mean it has Dame Judy Dench, William H. Macy, Whoopie Goldberg. All actors I greatly admire. Unfortunately, the film has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. There is no humor, adventure, interesting characters or anything else that would keep one interested. I kept saying to myself, it has to get better, but it never did. I finally had enough and walked out. I was not the only one to do so.

Anyone who, like me, assumed this was a modern remake of The Magic Roundabout will be sorely mistaken. The Magic Roundabout was a charming little stop-motion animation from the 1970s that I have loved since childhood (even if the creators where obviously smoking something!).

This movie bears no resemblance to that original animation, apart from lifting the character names. The rest is frankly the worst children's animation I have ever seen. Even Jon Stewart cannot save this turkey (the only reason I even bothered watching it).

Avoid at all costs, it deserves to be in the bottom 100. Go buy a DVD of the original series instead!

This was the all-time boring est movie I have ever seen in my short life. The plot line..boring..the jokes..boring..the animals..boring. This movie wasn't even on a long time in the theaters. It would have been better if it was a made for t.v. I would have respected it more and give it 2 stars. It definitely didn't have any qualities for a theatric movie. When I went to the theaters, that was the first time I actually wanted to leave after 10 minutes of watching it.

I can't believe the creators of the 'Fairly Odd Parents' did such an awful job on this movie. And I don't even like the odd parents. I expected more of this movie. I am very aware that this movie was made for little children. But that doesn't mean that older and adults can't say that they didn't like this movie.

At least I got some sleep in the theater! No offense to anyone who like this movie.

This is a poor choice for kids, poor choice for adults, and poor choice for everyone in between. The movie simply has no appeal to -anyone-. I'd hold Doogal up as a shining example that a string of great voices does not a good animated film make.

For children, I can't see the appeal. The handful of jokes in the movie are mostly pop-culture references--most of which will probably sail right over kids' heads--and overly predictable gags throughout. Even then, the jokes that do remain aren't particularly funny: a skeleton mentions "Pirates of the Caribbean" by name and that's it, or one of the characters quotes a line from Pulp Fiction during what's supposed to be a sad moment.

For adults, I definitely don't see the appeal. Besides the trite jokes, the plot is so predictable and irritating that it grates on one's nerves. There is a -bit- of redemption with being able to hear Ian McKellan and Jon Stewarts' voices, but their lines are so awful that it just begs the question of what possessed them to bother with Doogal in the first place. Beyond that, the characters themselves are very flat, all of which have stock personalities, and there is absolutely zero development of any of them, not even to reflect the 'moral of the story'.

There is no highlight to this movie whatsoever. It's not even worth a Netflix rental. Avoid it altogether and save yourself the 85 minutes. KF

Why would you bash this beautiful film. GO DIE IF YOU HATE THIS! There's so much great stuff like the main character dongle. He shows progression. At the star he just your average porn star then he becomes a porn director and steals the show. Then there's the infamous scene where dongle kill his brother for stealing his acting roll in... Aladdin and the 40 Horny Genie Whores. Man this is amazing.

Lets address a few fools one guy says this is boring. Well the fact your still alive is boring.

Dongle is my favorite porn star and porn star movie documentary thing anything less then a ten out of ten would be racist.

Now, let me start by saying I normally enjoy animated movies. They're refreshing, fun and a nice change of pace from the drugs/sex/violence/vulgarity of the majority of movies out there. Don't get me wrong, I like those things in movies, as well but sometimes you need a break from that.

With that said, Doogal was terrible. I didn't even know who to root for in this sorry excuse for animated fun. Lots of stars in the cast, so you'd think they'd put more into the writing. They re-used several jokes, many fart/burp jokes which even kids tire of. I didn't care about any of the characters and couldn't even tell why I should be cheering for the good/evil! It was nice to, like I said, watch something pure and non-offensive. But people making animated movies these days pay all their attention to graphics and smooth scene transition than they do to story lines and this movie was the perfect example. However, even THAT didn't work in this movie. The graphics seemed choppy and forced, almost as though I was "watching" a video game.

I'm no kid, so I can't really tell if a kid would enjoy this movie or not, but I'm assuming even the smartest of kids between the ages of 2-10 would be yawning half way through asking if it was almost over yet.

Looking for some good recent animation? Stay away from this one. Hoodwinked, Wallace & Gromit, etc. at least make an attempt at decent jokes and clever characters. Doogal was a distraction at best.

This is a children's story, and has children values. This is not for the teen-year-old. I have a very young child, he loved it, kept him interested throughout the movie. I kinda found out the characters fun, the Moose was very cool. The animation. was old school, very nice to see. But not having a background on the characters was at first daunting, my son didn't have a problem. Although it did try to add 'adult' humor, it was very easy to spot. I gave it a good vote because my son talked about it all day long, and that is what is important? this tale is good, and not as scary that my child wouldn't be up with nightmares. The actors voice were very well, and you could tell that they were having fun in their roles.

Seriously, this is possibly the worst animated feature of all time. Not only is the story LAME, but it jumps around way too much. There is absolutely no character development whatsoever. The voice acting is horrendous; the voices don't fit the characters at all. You would think with Jimmy Fallon and Whoopi Goldberg, the movie would be somewhat amusing…it was just the opposite. I found myself wanting to kick that stupid little dog right in the face. He is obnoxious and condescending. If I hadn't fallen asleep half way through, the entire experience would have been a waste. I would rather watch Ben Affleck as Hamlet for a month straight, then see this "movie" one more time. Don't waste your time…don't waste your money and don't insult your kids by making them choke through this mess.

This was possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. It makes dukes of hazards look like Gone With The Wind.

The only time I laughed at the movie was from relief, when it ended. The jokes in the movie were horrible. For example, when skeletons came out of the ground they said "Pirates of the Carribian." Thats it. WHAT? This movie was released by the weinstien brothers who were the head of mirimax. Michael Eisner fired them a few years ago, I am starting to think that this was a good idea, because even Eisner would not release stink like this.

Also, the dubbing was horrible. There was a moose in the movie, whose mouth did not move, but he still spoke. Don't see this movie, it sucks.

Warning: No Spoilers ahead. You can't spoil what is already totally rotten.

The key to comedy is timing, folks. You can't take what might have been a funny line (we'll never know now, will we?), and cram it together so it fits (loosely) with the vague movements of the character's mouths. It's painful to watch, really. I would have walked out, but my boys (2 and 4) were being quiet, which doesn't happen often. They weren't enthralled, mind you, they were BORED. I kept hoping for them to start acting up, so I could have an excuse to take them out of the theater! I wonder, if we HAD walked out, would they have bothered to continue showing the film, considering we were the only ones watching? The timing of the humor is so badly botched, that even the producers of the teaser trailer edited it to make it work better. Just some examples: "Sorry, the brave knight couldn't make it." It made me think Jon Stewart's voice would be given to the title character, but it wasn't. The real voice of the pooch is a kid. Why change this? Because if trailer audiences heard the voice they really gave the dog, they would stay away. Oh, wait, they seem to be staying away anyway. Another example: The rabbit picks up a gem stone and says "my preciousss... The trailer cut away from the bunny, caught a glimpse of the rest of the group gasping, then back to the rabbit, who says "just kidding." In the film version, the rabbit says something like "mypreciousjustkidding." It was as bad, if not worse, than the time the smurf movie used one voice for all those little blue rodents, rather than the various ones already being used for the TV series. What a cheat! It was like a mystery-science-theater-3000 version, only I didn't see anyone sitting in the front row of our theater. Oh, yeah, and it wasn't funny. Really, folks, I'm a movie lover, and I HATED this. I loved Hoodwinked, even when nobody else did, so that tells you something. I'm actually going to wait for the DVD and hope it has the original language track with subtitles. But even without subtitles, even if it's in a language I don't speak, it'll probably be more enjoyable to watch. SHAME ON YOU, WEINSTEINS!

After coming fresh off of a pretty good movie with Hoodwinked, something fell totally apart when it came to this movie. This is the first movie in a LONG time where I was constantly checking my watch to see if it was almost over. And at a short 85 minutes, that is pretty sad.

Let me say a couple good things about the movie. The pre-movie cartoon was really funny. The animation kept the cute, and simplistic CGI style found in Hoodwinked.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of bad parts to the movie. The thing that bothered me the most were the number of puns and pop references. I think it is good when they are used, but they went overboard. They didn't always even fit in with the situation. I would have to say, they were almost forced. Then the references would be above most of the 'target' audience. Another problem is that I don't care much for 'fart' jokes. Unfortunately, about the only time I really heard any laughter from the kids in the audience was when a flatulent character was on screen. Even the story was pretty weak.

It was a shame considering that this movie had such a great cast. But I would have to recommend avoiding this movie unless there is absolutely nothing left to watch that you can take a kid to.

If you are over the age of 2, I do not suggest going to this movie, unless your kids force you under knife and gun. After many successful animated movies for the ENTIRE family, which include Hoodwinked, Shrek, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Shark Tale, and even Monsters INC., this falls short of "Family Friendly". This is the type of movie that should go straight to DVD and be bought by families with 2 and 3 year olds to watch when they have a baby sitter. It clearly falls under the same league as Sesame Street and *gasp* Barney.

I went with my family, and we only watched 15 minutes of it before changing our plans and seeing Firewall. Luckily, the manager had no problem if we had watched under 30 minutes of the movie. Within the 15 minutes I saw, there was bad animation (comparable to Casper's Haunted Christmas and other straight to DVD movies) and horrible jokes. It is the kind of movie where there is laughter from 2 year olds because the cow was singing opera (which hurt my eardrums) and a wagon flying around.

If you plan on seeing this movie, be sure to bring some earplugs and a sleeping pill to take a nice 1 and a half hour nap, if you can sleep through the laughter of the 2 year olds. Do something for yourself and hire a babysitter to take your children, but be sure to pay them extra.

Let me make this simple:This film should be avoided. Go find the original version of this film called the Magic Roundabout that has a great collection of English actors doing voices. Here they've changed it all around so that its a bunch of actors pretending to act for a pay check. its awful. Really it is, the difference is like night and day. This is just a good little film ruined by attempts to making it acceptable for American audiences. On top of that the script was reworded so that it was hip and happening and now. The casting sounds good, in theory, but when you consider that they gave a voice to the moose, who's lips never move and never spoke in the original version you know you're in trouble. I know I've always wanted to hear Kevin Smith say with almost no emotion "oh look Blue Man Group is in town".

One of the worst films of the year. (which is not the case of the original version)

Now I'm probably slightly biased towards the British version but 'Doogal'..... just made me angry. They re-dub voices that (in my opinion) were charming and crammed it with a boring, bland cast with no emotion or enthusiasm and then packed the film full of cultural reference's and fart jokes. Boring as hell. Should have never been released in the US if they planned for this jallopy pile of s***. I'm SURE the people in US could have understood the accents fine. But I'm sure this was just another money grabber than an entertaining charming film.

Avoid raping your ears with this at all costs.

Why is it so hard to believe that they made it a horrible movie on purpose, and made it look like it was targeted towards kids? Now, I love Jon Stewart. His performance was the only remotely redeeming quality of this movie. The fact that Judi Dench's performance, as well as Ian McKellan's, were even a part of this movie angered me to no end. My brother bought this on DVD because he loves Jon Stewart. Frankly, I'm glad he did.

Now, every joke in this movie falls flat, every portion of the script is bad (and teaches a negative lesson), and many good actors' reputations were tarnished by this movie. At least, those that were known to be in it, like Whoopi Goldberg and...who else did we know was gonna be in it ahead of time besides her and Jon Stewart? Jon Stewart basically announced it was a bad movie when he announced his character on The Daily Show: Zeebad, a talking spring that is attempting to freeze the world...with his mustache. Right there, I knew I didn't wanna pay for this movie. But my brother did, and so I watched it...

As a 15-year-old nerd, I've seen pretty much every movie referenced. I came in with their horrible, horrible cover of The Kinks' version of "You Really Got Me". After 5 minutes, I was angry at the movie. But...somehow, that was fun to me. Anyone who saw The Ring 2 with friends knows what I mean. That movie was so much fun to make fun of, nobody even cared if you talked through the entire movie.

The same, I assume, was the goal of Doogal. Because the entire time, I basically ranted in anger of the Pulp Fiction/Pirates of the Caribbean/LotR reference, the fact that I wanted to kill Doogal and everyone in his party, and that Judi Dench(/Ian McKellan/Whoopi/Jimmy/anyone worth mentioning minus Jon Stewart) should have not touched this movie.

But people mostly saw this movie with their kids, or saw it alone. This experience is relatively unique. Watch this with friends or don't touch it. The purpose is probably to make fun of it, not actually enjoy it. I loved hating this movie, just like people love to hate Paris Hilton/Britney Spears/Lindsay Lohan/(insert slutty celebrity people hate).

What a terrible shame. What could have been an outstanding voice cast for an animated movie was wasted on the worst script I have ever seen. (and i have seen shark boy and lava-girl, the heffalump movie, and Batman and Robin!). I doubt Jon Stewart will get another chance to lend his voice to an animated movie which is a shame. I have given this movie a 5 out of 10 and honestly 4 of that is based on his performance. Jon was outstanding and he could be an asset to anyone making a film needing the voice of a villain. Kevin Smith's role, while small, was funny and Jimmy Fallon was great. The scriptwriters (if they exist) just seemed to try and follow some formula for modern animation films. Cutesy animals...check. 3.5 trendy pop culture references to entertain adults.....check. Again the story was just so lame that it just bogged down.

The other 1 out of ten is based on the short that opened the film up, it was great! So go see this movie this weekend, cause I have a feeling it wont be around next weekend.