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The Shaggy Dog Movie Review

The Shaggy Dog is a 1959 fantasy comedy film directed by Charles Barton and starring Fred MacMurray and Tommy Kirk. It is one of the most popular Disney live-action films of the time.

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“Gee, Wilby, you know I like you much better as a dog“

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Based on a Felix Salten novel, the movie is about a teenage boy who becomes cursed with periodically turning into a sheepdog. The flick was released in 1959 to amazing box office grosses. It was the second biggest hit of the year, but nowadays its impact is somewhat blunted as not a lot of people are talking about it or even watching it today.

I actually found it to be pretty solid, though certainly not among Disney’s classics. It is a strange breed of a movie that is very much a children’s flick, but it’s overall a comedy through and through with jokes coming in every second, which was unusual for the studio. It also contained very timely, but now dated Cold War spy elements, which also made the movie odd.

It is a wildly uneven product, but when it worked, it fired on all cylinders. That final car chase was superbly executed and all of the policemen’s reactions at seeing a dog driving a car were priceless. The film’s humor is definitely one-note, but it did make me chuckle a couple of times, which I did not expect. It’s the type of goofy, childish humor that never gets old.

The characterization is also quite good. Tommy Kirk brought a lot of heart to this movie and his Wilbur is very sympathetic as a character. Another standout is of course Fred MacMurray. This was the beginning of his prominent late-stage career working for the Disney studio and he was surprisingly terrific here. You would not expect a former noir guy to be this great as a character in a children’s movie, but he was both very funny and highly charismatic.

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The Shaggy Dog is at its best when it’s focusing on his character and the father-son relationship. However, the spy elements were very weak and the whole romantic subplot with the boy’s love interest could have easily been cut from this story. The movie’s pacing is wildly uneven as is the inferior directing, but at least the acting was good and the flick is fun, albeit overly silly.

The Shaggy Dog was a huge movie back when it was released, but nowadays its impact has been significantly blunted. It’s a live-action Disney family flick that is overly silly, but fun in its story. The pacing is all over the place and some plot elements worked less than others, but the humor was admittedly solid here, and Fred MacMurray was very memorable in the first of his many gigs for the studio that he did in his career’s final stage. This is an odd, but pleasantly endearing and goofy children’s flick.

My Rating – 3.5