We’re only in the third week of the year, yet already there’s a clear frontrunner for the least auspicious trailer of 2018. Not coincidentally, it’s also the trailer that answers the question, what if the director of Scooby-Doo and Beverly Hills Chihuahua remade Miss Congeniality with his favorite subject—crudely-rendered talking dogs?
Show Dogs seems to take place in a world somewhere between Garfield and Marmaduke, where animals disconcertingly move their mouths to speak only to each other and a bored audience. Will Arnett, having showed his tolerance for talking pet operatives in the abysmal guinea pig feature G-Force, plays a cop begrudgingly teamed with a K-9 unit to investigate a panda smuggling operation hidden within a dog show. (Best in Show sure missed the obvious story, right?) Ludacris, mercifully hidden in a sound booth, takes on the other half of this Turner and Hooch scenario as Arnett’s Rottweiler partner. Stanley Tucci, Alan Cumming, Gabriel Igelesias—and, hey, why not Shaq?—round out the film’s completely arbitrary cast of dog voices.
Already delayed at least twice, Show Dogs will finally be dragged into theaters April 6.
