Peter's got a big problem: His wife is barking!

That uproarious setup gives way to a black comedy -- if you can call it that -- that is so bizarrely unfunny that it's a miracle stars like Lisa Kudrow, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Hank Azaria ever agreed to do it. Maybe they didn't see the script.

While the advertising and cover touts the aforementioned stars, you don't see much of them. Primarily this is a story about Peter (Lee Tergesen), who doesn't know what to do when the wife (Heather Morgan) starts to believe she's canine. Namely this comprises barking at strangers when she's angry, but soon she's nuzzling relatives and ceasing to speak human tongues. At least she's not peeing on the furniture, though come to think of it, that'd make for a better movie. Various sideplots are thrown in, with Kudrow turning up as a veterinarian dating a client (a person, that is, not a dog) in a secondary story that feels like it was inserted just to wedge Lisa Kudrow into the film.

Morgan -- who also wrote the script -- is downright tragic as the dog-woman. Most of Morgan's work is in sitcoms, and here she's just plain awful, scary-bad when she's acting doggish and laughable-bad when she's acting catatonic after the head shrinks get a hold of her. Frankly, it would have been better and way more interesting if they'd cast a puppet, or a cardboard cutout, or even an actual dog in her role. (This movie actually appeared at Sundance, which should tell you a thing or two about what it takes to get a film in to that festival these days.) Director Kasia Adamik does a capable enough job with the shot-on-video production, but there's simply no story -- and I mean none -- worth working with.

The greatest insult comes from the ultimate packing of this film for home video (it was wisely granted no theatrical release), which was changed from the original poster image -- a cartoon of Morgan's screaming face (Adamik is best known for her work as a storyboard artist and for being the daughter of Agnieska Holland) -- to a shot of the backside of a sexy girl (who doesn't appear in the film) in shorts with a pawprint on the ass.

This is not helping, people. At all.