Teacher's Pet Review
by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)January 29th, 2004
Susan Granger's review of "Teacher's Pet" (Disney)
Based on a former ABC Saturday morning and now Toon Disney TV show, this delightful animated feature is about Spot, a talking canine who - like Pinocchio - yearns to be a real boy.
Spot (voiced by Nathan Lane) is the pet of Leonard Helperman (Shaun Fleming) whose mother (Debra Jo Rupp) is also his fourth-grade teacher. Which explains why Spot's allowed to attend classes, disguised as a boy named Scott. But when Mrs. Helperman wins a free trailer trip to Florida to compete as a finalist in a teacher contest, Spot is devastated that he can't tag along because the Principal (Wallace Shawn) won't allow dogs in his vehicle. Nevertheless, Spot stows away on the "Wentawaygo," since he's eager to jump at the chance to turn into a human, courtesy of a DNA-altering device created by a crackpot scientist in Florida named Ivan Krank (Kelsey Grammer). Krank's experiments have not always been successful - there's the alligator boy (Paul Reubens) and the mosquito girl (Megan Mullally) - but Krank's sure he can turn Spot into Scott. The only catch is not calculating for "dog years," and Spot finds himself in the body of a middle-aged man with "hairy knuckles and lower back pain." Can this genetic wrong be righted?
The sly, whimsical sophistication can be traced to irreverent cartoonist Gary Baseman, whose work appears in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Writers Bill & Cheri Steinkellner and director Tim Bjorklund make the most out of their cast, utilizing catchy musical numbers with campy lyrics. Jerry Stiller scores as a cranky canary with zippy one-liners as does David Ogden Stiers as a 'fraidy cat. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Teacher's Pet" is a surprisingly mischievous, amusing 8. It's splashy, bright, colorful fun for the whole family.
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