I'm a little ashamed to say this, but here goes: I didn't know what Doogal was supposed to be. From the looks of him (see picture, below), I thought he might be some kind of hairy bowel movement. His name is Doogal. His best friend is a snail. It's not unreasonable. It's juvenile, yes, but that's what Hollywood animated fare has become, by and large, so you can hardly blame me.

Turns out Doogal (Daniel Tay) is actually a dog. His best friend is Florence (Kylie Minogue), as well as a cow (Whoopi Goldberg), a train (Chevy Chase), and a flatulent moose (Kevin Smith). Their adventure, and you'll need to hang in there for this, involves magic diamonds that can freeze the sun. There's of course a bad guy with a plan to do just that: He's a kind of alien with a spring for the lower half of his body (voiced by an audibly bored Jon Stewart). Their adventure to stop her takes them across the countryside and, er, into, like, a magic land, or, something, I think.

Doogal doesn't make a lick of sense, starting with the reason it's titled after a dog who's basically a minor character (and the only non-celebrity voice) when it gets down to it. As for the rest of it, well, that doesn't make any sense either. It's so baffling that it took me a week to write this pathetic little review. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the film is a half-redubbed version of the British film The Magic Roundabout, itself an adaptation of a 1960s French TV series. I can only assume that half the movie got lost in translation, and that's how we ended up with the bald mess we have today.

Still, this really isn't much worse than most of the non-Pixar animated films being released these days. If you're looking for something to amuse the kids on a Sunday afternoon, Doogal is as good a choice as, say, Bambi II. I wouldn't expect it to amuse them for more than about 25 minutes, though. That's when my daughter gave up on the thing.



Bring out yer dead.