Sacked from a film set for overacting, trained dog Pudsey (voiced by Walliams) wanders into London, meeting sparky teen Molly (Miekle-Small), her bratty little brother George (White) and their younger brother Tommy (Knights), who hasn't spoken since their dad left. To make a fresh start, their mum Gail (Hynes) moves them to the tiny village of Chuffington, and Pudsey stows away. As Gail and Molly flirt shamelessly with the hunks (Neal and Tittensor) on the nearby farm, their new landlord Thorne (Sessions) is nefariously planning to level the barns and erect a mammoth shopping mall.

The plot plays on every British adventure formula imaginable (Tommy actually falls into a well at one point), while the cinematography wallows in the gorgeous rural English countryside populated by a variety of cliches. But director Moore throws away any decent gags to focus on the unfunny vulgarity of a pig (voiced by Farrell) that thinks he's a chicken. Jokes are started and then abandoned without punchlines, while plot threads appear and disappear at random.

The script also indulges in rather shocking lapses in judgement, including some astonishingly rude innuendo and visual grotesqueness. There's also a ludicrous interlude in which Pudsey is sent to what looks like doggy Auschwitz, then leads the inmates in a shockingly lame escape after a bit of torturous rapping. Throughout, the editing is so choppy that Pudsey barely seems to be the same dog who won Britain's Got Talent. He does just one uninteresting trick over and over again.

In other words, every possibility is wasted. Without spending more money, this could easily have been an enjoyably scruffy dog romp, leading to further charming adventures. But the producers took such a lazy approach that they've probably destroyed Pudsey and trainer Ashleigh Butler's career, simply by neglecting to hire a writer or director who could tell a coherent story. Even the youngest children in the audience will smell a turkey.

themes, vulgarity, violence, innuendo

13.Jul.14