Dog day aftermath

As is my summer tradition, I selected the worst thing I could think of to watch. The rules are simple: it can't be "good" bad, it can't be too obscure or recent. Last year, the selection was "Zeus and Roxanne," wherein Steve Guttenberg and Kathleen Quinlan formed a creepy pseudo-nuclear family with the help of their children, a dog and a dolphin. After doing this for many years with justly forgotten family flicks, I decided to stick with the cutesy animal theme this time, but to also gradute to something in the PG-13 arena.

I cannot claim this has been a bad summer, or even a bad year, really. It's gone by really quickly, and I've been busy as hell. No one I care about has died, no major expenses have crippled me, the job is OK, living by myself has done wonders for my peace of mind... I haven't even gotten dumped. Because things are going so well, I figured it couldn't hurt to give myself an extra dose of shit cinema for summer 2006. Balance, right? So, I'd had my eye on something ever since I spotted a sequel on the shelf of my favorite video emporium - it went directly there ten years after the original. Then, to my amazement, some sick fuck made another one three years after that. All three star the least likable beneficiary of nepotism on television today. And a German Shepherd with an "attitude."

That's right. I'm saying that at the tender age of 31, I am sitting through the entire "K-9" trilogy.

"K-9"
(1989)
An innovator of sorts within the brief "renegade cop gets reluctantly partnered with a loveable dog" milieu of post-"Lethal Weapon" American action comedies, the original "K-9" hit the market just months prior to eventual two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks' turn in "Turner & Hooch." Both came more than half a decade before hirsute stoic Chuck Norris took on "Top Dog," which was infamous at the theater where I worked during college because it had made the least money of any movie that ever played there. "K-9" only ushered in one variation of mismatched cop pictures; at the height of their popularity, others included a grump (Burt Reynolds) pairing up with some sassy black kid in "Cop and a Half," a grump (Gene Hackman) partnered with a spazz who has disassociative identity disorder (Dan Aykroyd) in "Loose Cannons," a grump (Danny Glover) ushering around a spazz who is prone to accidents (Martin Short) in "Pure Luck" and faded grumps Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty teaming as son and mother for "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot." All winners, I'm sure.

Our grump for this film and its astoundingly belated sequels is Detective Mike Dooley, known as Dooley to both his co-workers and girlfriend. He's yet another copper who doesn't play by the rules, his cavalier disregard for decorum and penchant for snarky quips ultimately painting him as a lame white guy who's seen the "Beverly Hills Cop" sequels too often. Dooley is portrayed by John Belushi's loathesome brother, credited in these films as the more pretentious "James" (I smell a SAG workaround - according to the IMDB, he's credited as "Jim" for TV and voiceover parts). This guy's stardom has always baffled me. I think I'm supposed to like him because he's a regular Joe and he likes the Chicago Cubs. I know plenty of people like that, but only some of them are funny or personable. Jim Belushi is neither. Mel Harris of "thirtysomething" fame plays his girlfriend, Tracy, who is so underdeveloped she might as well have been played by a block of wood on which the words "plot device" were inscribed. Tracy complains that Dooley doesn't spend enough time with her, and she's right. He runs around all day and night trying to bust a drug-running industralist, even after his superiors pull him off the case. You'd think it was something personal, but Dooley doesn't seem to have any reason for pursuing this one guy beyond pure macho bullshit.

To this end, he snags a police dog named Jerry Lee ("The Killer," get it?) from another cop played by Al Bundy himself, Ed O'Neill. Dooley convinces Al to let him have the German Shepherd because he helps his fellow officer catch a plane flight, speeding up the police stand-off the surly cop was stuck overseeing by renting a car and driving it straight into the house where the baddies are holed up. It's only one example of this renegade clown's shoddy serving and protecting, which also includes blowing up his own police cruiser, handcuffing an informant to his car and driving down the street to extract info from him and bringing a police dog to a suspected drug storehouse, expecting results even though Dooley hasn't bothered to learn any of the proper commands. Furthermore, the film asks us to both accept and applaud his devil-may-care approach, although it seemed pretty disturbing to me. Dooley is so unapologetically reckless, he could be a character from "Reno 911!" (or, if he was cheating on Tracy and hit more people with his gun, from "The Shield").

Jerry Lee is considered eccentric because he eats chili (imagine the hilarious aftermath!) and also smells really bad. One supposed highlight of the film comes when Jerry Lee chews up a can of doggie deodorant that Dooley sprays on him, prompting the cop to secure the dog inside his prized 1965 Mustang convertible and send them both through a car wash with the top down. During this, Dooley watches on in glee and dances tauntingly at the dog while Rose Royce's "Car Wash" punctuates the non-humor in the most obvious manner possible. Yet, this sack of turds has the nuts to complain for the rest of the movie after Jerry Lee rips off the car's mirror when Dooley chains the dog to it. Jerry Lee gets back by interrupting Dooley's sex time with Tracy, upon whom the cop lays a reptilian lie about finding the pooch and bringing him home for her.

This scene includes footage of James Belushi running back and forth across a moonlit dining room wearing only boxer shorts.

Eventually, they make up, Jerry Lee proving himself willing to attack criminal-types with a violent fury that seems a psychic extension of Dooley's own sadistic tendencies. When Jerry Lee spies a hot poodle in another car, the soundtrack underlines their canine lust with a minute of soulful glances set to Yello's "Oh Yeah," and after the dogs get their freak on with Dooley's assistance, Jerry Lee rolls around in the grass to the strains of James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)." Eventually, after a clumsily-edited car chase (during which Dooley hollers such quips to the dog as "You wanna drive? Get a license!"), Tracy gets kidnapped and Dooley barges into the bad guy's swanky dinner party, firing his gun and calling the guy a murderer in front of his blueblood guests. Other stuff happens, the good guys win as expected. There's a forced "serious" section at the end where Jerry Lee gets shot by the evil drug runner and Dooley barges into an emergency room, ignoring health codes and threatening a doctor into removing the bullet by flashing his gun - just another oblivious move for which Dooley will receive no comeuppance. Dooley, Tracy, Jerry Lee and the poodle all drive to Vegas, a tepid recording of "Iko Iko" signaling an end to a flick that covered every base necessary for a cop-meets-dog action comedy, negating the necessity for another to ever exist. Of course, there are two more to go...

The only other thing worth noting about "K-9" is its familiar bit players. In addition to Ed O'Neill, who always seems weird playing someone other than the founder of NO MA'AM, the film includes brief appearances by a maitre'd played by Dan Castellaneta, a car salesman played by William Sadler and, most intriguingly, a guy who delivers a pizza to Dooley while he's on a stakeout played by Jerry Levine - best known as party animal Stiles in "Teen Wolf," which was helmed by "K-9" director Rod Daniel. In addition to that immortal Michael J. Fox vehicle, Daniel is also responsible for a bunch of terrible shit: "Like Father, Like Son," "The Super," "Beethoven's 2nd," "Home Alone 4"... I'll just stop.

While I hunt down a copy of "K-911," you should read this well-done article about gay metal musicians before Decibel takes it down. Props to those who made it out to my first *real* party at the crib this weekend... I'm still cleaning up, but now I know some of my neighbors. If you're looking for recommendations among new music, I can say I have recently enjoyed OutKast's Idlewild (the movie looks like the bomb), Placebo's Meds, Kalmah's The Black Waltz, Ratatat's Classics, The Bouncing Souls' The Gold Record, Beirut's Gulag Orkestar, and - soon to be released - Insomnium's Above the Weeping World, The Roots' Game Theory, Zoé's Memo Rex Commander y el Corazón Atómico de la Vía Láctea and Mastodon's Blood Mountain.