Review of Rover Dangerfield

I've always had kind of a perverse curiosity about this animated movie starring Roger Dangerfield as an animated dog who, having lived in Las Vegas his whole life, has to learn to exist on a farm. It just seemed like such a moronic idea. Well, it just popped up on Netflix Instant, having never been released on DVD, and I decided that, no matter how awful it was, it's only 73 minutes long. Well, yeah, self-fulfilling prophecy and all that. It's terrible. I mean, the idea of a G rated Rodney Dangerfield should have stopped me in my tracks (okay, Ladybugs wasn't too bad, I guess). What's really weird is that Dangerfield himself was the creative force behind this whole project (he co-wrote the script with Harold Ramis). You'd think he would figure that no child would really want to see a cartoon starring himself. And Dangerfield fans aren't likely to enjoy him in such a toothless incarnation. About as dirty as it gets is when he sings a song about not "doing it" on a Christmas tree. Yes, there's a whole song where he promises his new girlfriend that he would never take a leak on a Christmas tree. Even worse, that's the only song that's even close to memorable, and it is only memorable because of its subject matter. At least Dangerfield isn't nearly as bad a singer as you might imagine, which allows the songs to go by more or less unnoticed. What's really weird is that Dangerfield didn't attempt in the slightest to get some blue jokes past the censors (it was a more innocent time than a decade later, when Shrek tickled us all pink with dick jokes), but the plot often gets absurdly dark. At least two plot points of the film have Rover facing possible execution, once by his original owner's gangster boyfriend (who himself apparently gets whacked in the end) and once by his new farmer master, who catches him with a dead turkey (which wolves killed). Yes, the turkey was just talking in the previous scene (voiced by Simpsons/Futurama regular Tress MacNeille, who voices a few other characters along the way, too), and then it has its neck broken. Rover is slapping its dangling head about, trying to revive it, when the farmer discovers him. Then he holds its head up and tries to do an impression of a turkey. I'm sure no children were traumatized by that. As bad as it is, it's a curio that I can check off my "I can't believe they made this movie" list.