NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.
NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the movie I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.
NOTE #3: If you like this movie, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.
Who doesn't know about Arthur? That glasses-wearing aardvark who looks absolutely nothing like an aardvark (I'd honestly say he looks more like a capybara or something) has the honor of being the star of one of the longest-running cartoon shows in the world. He got his start in books, of course, but it's the show that really put him on the map.
And since the show was such a big hit, it only makes sense for them to make an Arthur MOVIE. So in August 2006, PBS Kids Go! saw the premiere of Arthur's Missing Pal.
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| I couldn't find a high-quality version of the actual DVD cover, so I used this. No, at no point in this movie do Arthur and Buster search for Pal in a spiraling blue vortex. False advertising, much? |
Arthur's Missing Pal was directed by Yvette Kaplan, who before this worked on shows like Cyberchase, King of the Hill, and Doug. It was written by Ken Scarborough, who was a writer on several PBS Kids shows, including Arthur. To be honest, I remember finding it neat how they decided to have Arthur and his chums in CGI (this actually wasn't the first time, they were previously depicted in CGI for a video game called Arthur: Ready to Race), but now that the novelty of CGI has long worn off... yeah, I have to admit this CGI isn't very good. I'm not one hundred percent sure what the point was of making it CGI in the first place when they could've just used the traditional animation of the show. It's pretty much a love it or hate it film among Arthur fans, with some liking it and others calling it crap. I remember liking it when it first came out, but I liked a lot of crap when I was younger so that doesn't really mean much.
Does the film hold up? Somebody requested I do a review of it, so let's find out. This is Arthur's Missing Pal.
The movie starts off with Arthur (voiced by Carr Thompson) - who was sleeping on top of the covers for some reason (I know every other review of this movie pointed that out, but it's still an oddity) waking up on a beautiful sunny morning... just before things take a turn for the creepy as we are subjected to THIS:
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| A very creepy set of eyes on what appears to be an oblong cantaloupe. |
A knockoff of the Mission Impossible theme starts playing as we cut to random clips of characters acting all sneaky - drawing on maps, setting up video cameras, that sort of thing. Meanwhile, Pal (Yvette Kaplan, presumably because they couldn't afford Frank Welker or Dee Bradley Baker) is... licking Arthur's feet. Yeesh, Pal, you don't know where those feet have been.
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| "Forget the Chum Bucket! This is PERSONAL!" |
Downstairs, everyone else in Arthur's family is busy. Arthur's mom, Jane Read (Catherine Lavin), is trying to feed Baby Kate, his dad, David Read (Bruce Dinsmore, who was credited as "Bruce Smithee" for some reason?), is searching for his guacamole bowl, and the bane of Arthur fans like yours truly's existence, D.W. (Luciano Rauso), is excited because she just found what she needs to win tickets to a Mary Moo Cow ice show. Arthur comes downstairs with Pal and tries to feed Pal his medicine, which proves to be difficult. D.W. is being... well, D.W.
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| Rule of thumb regarding CGI: if a character's hair looks less like hair and more like a weird helmet, you're doing something wrong. |
Arthur is just about to feed Pal some dog food when there's a knock at the door. When he opens the door, in comes Buster (Daniel Brochu, credited as "Conway Bruce") on roller skates, because nobody's ever told him that you should probably take off your roller skates before entering somebody else's house. WHACKY SHENANIGANS ensue, then Buster reminds Arthur of the super-duper greatest ever water balloon fight that they're having, which immediately makes Arthur forget about the fact that his dog hasn't eaten. Well, okay, I suppose Jane or David could feed Pal, right? It'd only take a few seconds to pour some dog food into his bowl, wouldn't it? Nope, they leave the room as well. The Reads are pretty sucky pet owners, aren't they?
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| "Arthur, if this DVD doesn't sell enough copies, they'll never make a Postcards From Buster movie!" "Buster, no offense, but your spinoff was mediocre at best. I think the chances of them giving you your own movie are pretty small." "I can dream, can't I?" |
All of the kids are taking this water balloon fight thing seriously. Muffy (Nichole Blanchard) is filming it with her video camera, acting like a sports announcer. From the way they act, you'd think they were in the middle of a battlefield, with bombshells raining down as opposed to water balloons.
Since Pal hasn't eaten, he decides to have a drink from his water bowl. But wouldn't you know it, he drinks too much and winds up having to go to the bathroom. He needs to go outside, but nobody's around to (or, in D.W.'s case, wants to) let him out. The Reads don't have a pet door?
Anyhow, the kids are taking this so seriously that Francine (Bailey Lauren) has made it her mission to pelt Arthur with so many water balloons he won't dry off until... I don't know what month this movie takes place in, so let's say November. Fortunately, the Brain (James Buckholder) has set up video cameras all over the neighborhood (somehow) so he can tell Arthur when Francine is approaching. But, D'OOOOOOOOOOOH! Pal appears in the window trying to get Arthur's attention just as Francine shows up, giving away his cover, and she pelts a water balloon at him in slow-motion.
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| See, THIS is why all dog owners should install at least ONE pet door. |
Arthur and his friends walk off, Arthur feeling humiliated, and Pal still has to urinate. His only hope now seems to be to teach himself how to use the toilet. Incidentally, there was a recurring thing in the series where Pal and the other non-anthropomorphic animals could talk to each other, and to babies like Kate. Considering that Pal is a main character here, I'm surprised that they don't have him talking at any point in this movie. Maybe the guy who does his voice in the show was too busy?
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| "Do I really want to pee in the thing that I drink from? This is a conundrum..." |
After a brief cut to the local ice cream shop the Sugar Bowl, where we see Francine being her usual obnoxious self...
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| I think Francine and Muffy look the worst of the characters in this CGI style. |
...we cut back to Pal, still trying to climb up to the toilet. For some reason, they try to make it seem like Pal winds up getting flushed down the toilet, even though I'm personally not sure a dog - even a small one like Pal - would even fit in the pipes. Wouldn't he just clog it?
Arthur, meanwhile, realizes that he forgot to take Pal for his walk and rushes home, only to discover that - OH, NO! - Pal is missing. He heads back to the Sugar Bowl and tells everyone, and Buster decides to take charge. After all, he's a detective. "Buster Baxter is on the case!" he declares. Spoiler alert: he's going to make Inspector Gadget look competent.
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| (This would probably work better if it were a GIF, but eh...) "You spin me right round, baby, right round..." |
We get a montage of everyone looking for Pal. He's not at the city pound. He's not in the park. He's not downtown. He's not in my thoughts. He's not at the Sugar Bowl.
Here's something that's always confused me - why the heck does Binky (also Bruce Dinsmore) have a human nose? Even ignoring the fact that he's a bulldog, is there a reason why they gave him a human nose? Is he half-human? Do humans even exist in this world? Well, according to Postcards From Buster, yes, they do, but that just raises further questions...
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| There's at least one other character in the show (Jenna) who also has a human nose. Maybe there IS some interspecies breeding going on in Elwood City... |
Arthur and Buster head back to Arthur's house to look for clues. D.W. is acting oddly suspicious... gee, I wonder if she might be responsible for Pal going missing. But at least she does try to help a little via telling everyone that Pal is missing with a megaphone.
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| "ATTENTION, EVERYONE: I, D.W. READ, HAVE JUST BEEN VOTED THE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER IN ALL OF CHILDREN'S TELEVISION." |
"Something fishy's going on here," Arthur points out. "And it looks like it's time to fry some fish!" Buster adds as they head inside to interrogate D.W.
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| "We saw you talking on the phone to Cruella De Vil earlier! Any chance you put a hit out on Pal?!" |
Buster correctly points out that D.W. has been oddly helpful for somebody who hates Pal. D.W. eventually admits that she saw Pal sitting in the toilet earlier that day, leading Arthur and Buster to believe that Pal got flushed away - and just a few months before Roddy did.
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| "Eugh, Arthur, how long has that poop been sitting in your toilet? Haven't you ever heard of FLUSHING?" |
Arthur's dad isn't much help either. He suggests that they give Pal a little more time - a couple more hours, for instance. Arthur agrees with me and thinks that's an awful idea. He and Buster meet back up with the others, and the Brain tells him that Pal will eventually find his way back. Alas, then Francine decides to be even more of a pain in the rear and cheerfully says that her cousin's dog ran away and then stayed with the first family that fed him. Jeez, Francine.
We then see Pal popping out of a trash can... ah, so he's been rooming with Oscar, then? He runs around town having a yabba-dabba-doo time while a disembodied voice sings a song called "It's Great to Be Me". It's catchy, but the disembodied voice isn't much of a singer.
Oh, and TWICE during the song they do that thing where the character who they're searching for is nearby but they don't see them. I hate this cliche. It's so frustrating!
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| Dang it, Pal, just stay in one place and let Arthur find you! |
After the song, Pal chases a butterfly right into the path of a lawnmower while Arthur and Buster are asking Muffy and Prunella (Wendee Lee) if they've seen Pal. Prunella remembers that the other day Arthur brought Pal with him to the Sugar Bowl, then proceeded to leave him outside in the hot sun while he went inside and arm-wrestled Francine. Jeez, Arthur, do you know NOTHING about pet-taking-care-of? Why didn't he just bring Pal into the Sugar Bowl? Does the place have a "No Dogs Allowed" sign in the window? Wouldn't that cause some controversy in a city where some of the residents are anthropomorphic dogs?
They go behind the Sugar Bowl and find some of Pal's footprints, which they follow and wind up running into the guy who was driving the lawnmower. They don't find Pal, but they do find his collar. The lawnmower guy explains that he saw Pal in his path, but Pal managed to get away, and in the process his collar came off. They run off to find Pal, but by this point he's already across town.
Arthur and Buster lament that Pal will wind up forgetting about Arthur and that Buster is a lousy detective respectively. But then they see more of Pal's footprints, leading right to an ice cream truck. Buster thinks that Pal must have learned how to drive and is driving the ice cream truck. Of course, Pal hasn't gotten a driver's license, but he IS inside the ice cream truck.
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| Just a tip, Pal - avoid the CHOCOLATE ice cream. Chocolate isn't good for dogs. |
Alas, the ice cream truck drives away just after Arthur and Buster spot Pal inside. When they get back to the Read household, David calls up the ice cream factory, but all he gets is an answering machine. They'll have to wait until morning to find out where they park their trucks. Then Arthur sees the can of dog food on the counter and realizes that he forgot to feed Pal, making him think that Pal ran away because he's a lousy dog owner. To be fair, somebody ELSE could have fed him. Jane, David and D.W. were all in the kitchen with him.
We get another song that's been stuck in my head since 2006 called "You and Me and the Stars Up Above" as Arthur, Buster and D.W. look up into the night sky and hallucinate that one of the constellations is Pal. I'd love it if they did an animated movie where a disembodied voice starts singing a song and the characters look around in confusion, and then one of them asks, "Where the heck is that coming from?". I dunno, I think it'd be funny.
The ice cream truck that Pal is in heads to the Mr. Kone Ice Cream factory, which judging from the architecture must belong to Willy Wonka.
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| So, who was driving that truck anyway? Did they not notice the dog in the back eating its entire supply of ice cream? |
Pal manages to get out of the truck, only to wind up being chased by two of the ugliest CGI Dobermans that I have ever seen. We never see any security guards, so I guess the owners of the factory just let these two dogs run free at night and leave it up to them to stop folks from sneaking in and helping themselves to the ice cream.
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| Judging by their color schemes, these Dobermans appear to be part-cow. Maybe that's where the factory workers get their milk from... |
The next morning, Arthur - still sleeping on top of the covers for some reason - is woken up by D.W. She won tickets to the Mary Moo Cow ice show and she wants Arthur to come with her. He refuses, pointing out that he still needs to find Pal and heads off with David and Buster to the ice cream factory... which has a human-looking clown for a mascot, adding to the confusion of whether or not there are humans in this world of anthropomorphic animals.
When they get to the factory, they are greeted by our Nightmare Fuel for this evening - a terrifying buck-toothed clown/ice cream cone hybrid abomination. If you think Ronald McDonald is creepy, take a look at THIS:
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| Shouldn't this thing be starring in a Stephen King novel or something?! |
The creature of nightmares tells them that there's no dog at the factory (which is clearly a lie, we saw the Dobermans) and the ice cream factory is closed for emergency clean-up so they can just buzz off. But then Arthur and Buster find Pal's pawprints going up a ladder into a window, so Pal MUST be in the factory. There's also a lot of tan hairs. "Come on... let's have another word with Mr. Cone..." David says in a really threatening fashion which makes me think that he, Arthur, and Buster are going to beat that creepy animatronic with a wrench unless he gives them information as to where Pal is.
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| "That clown/ice cream cone hybrid thing is gonna give us some answers if it knows what's good for it..." |
Unfortunately, they DON'T take the animatronic apart piece by piece. Instead, Arthur and David beg it to let them in, and it does. The doors swing open, and the three head inside, allowing us to see the interior of the factory, which looks like it was decorated by the Wiggles.
It is inside the factory that we meet Mr. Kone (Marc Graue), the factory's owner. He appears to be some kind of mole... or maybe he's a rat? Or maybe he's whatever Prunella is?
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| "I'll show you around the factory so long as you promise not to steal any Fizzy Lifting Drinks. We just had the ceiling washed and sterilized..." |
Mr. Kone explains that there was a big hullabaloo the previous night and when he got to the factory, it was a mess and the Dobermans had upset stomachs. He jokes that they might've eaten Pal... do Dobermans actually eat other dogs? I've heard that it's a dog eat dog world, but this is ridiculous.
They look at the security tapes, which shows them footage of Pal being chased by the Dobermans into the factory and dodging the mechanical hands and robots that do all the work (I guess Mr. Kone had to lay off all the Oompa-Loompas). Pal, fortunately, managed to get away after drenching the Dobermans in poorly-rendered ice cream.
Meanwhile, D.W. and Jane are at the Mary Moo Cow ice show, and D.W. complains that it's nothing like the TV show and that her ice cream cone tastes like dog, implying that Mr. Kone shipped out ice cream that his dogs contaminated with their... dog-ness. Arthur, Buster, and David head to a truck stop diner to ask if anyone's seen Pal, and it turns out the chef behind the counter has. Rosey (Mona Marshall), a big-rig driver, brought him in after finding him on the side of the road.
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| The chef appears to be a bulldog as well. He does NOT have a human nose, making Binky's all the more unusual. |
D.W. hears Pal barking at the ice show. Jane thinks that it was just the costumed dog skating around on the ice, but D.W. insists that it was Pal and that she's gonna find him. Actually, Pal IS at the ice show - backstage, as Rosey is a roadie for the show. Oh, the irony. When she and Jane ask the guy that owns the arena, he condescendingly tells D.W. that maybe she just imagined the barking upon seeing the costumed dog, to which D.W. to stop talking down to her. Nobody notices that Pal is riding around with Rosey in the zamboni.
Back home, Arthur decides to throw in the towel because he watched the video Muffy gave him of their big epic water balloon battle, which includes footage of Arthur yelling at Pal for giving away his position to Francine. Wait a minute, we didn't see him yelling at Pal earlier! He just glared at him and then walked off. And he pointedly did NOT say "Sometimes I wish I'd rather have any other dog in the world." as he was walking off. What the heck?
Arthur laments that he's an awful dog owner and that Pal must've run away because he doesn't want to be Arthur's pet. But then he remembers that he still has Pal's heartworm medicine, and that's very important for Pal to stay healthy. "We gotta find him, Buster! Pal needs his medicine!" he says. Buster reminds Arthur that the truck driver told Pal she'd be going to Elwood City, Huntington, Tangleberry, and Washington D.C. - what do all of those places have in common? Then D.W. calls up Arthur and tells him that Pal is at the arena, but Arthur thinks she's just trying to trick him into going to see the ice show.
Buster turns on the TV, and they get a commercial for the Mary Moo Cow ice show, which according the announcer is going to ELWOOD CITY, HUNTINGTON, TANGLEBERRY, AND WASHINGTON D.C.
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| Is it just me, or does the Read Family's couch look like a watermelon? |
So surely Pal is at the arena, right? Nope, the truck just left. This sounds like a job for the Brain and his multiple surveillance cameras. Arthur, Buster, Binky, Prunella, and Francine head off to find the truck before it gets to the highway as the Brain tells them its location. Buster calls up Muffy and asks her to get in her limo and block the intersection, but Muffy isn't being particularly helpful.
Long story short, Muffy finally gets in her limo and pulls out of the driveway just as the truck is about to drive by her house. Arthur finds Pal and tells Rosey that he just wanted to give her Pal's medicine. He talks about how he's a bad dog owner and blah-blah-blah but she tells him that if he was willing to chase down a truck just to make sure the dog gets his medicine, surely he's not such a bad dog owner after all. And Pal clearly wants to go back to Arthur.
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| I wonder if they were at all tempted to have Pal pee on Arthur here. Did he ever actually go to the bathroom? |
Since the mystery has been solved, Arthur tells Buster that he's not a lousy detective after all. But wait - how did Pal get outside? When D.W. and the Read parents arrive back home, D.W. admits that after she found Pal in the toilet, she fished him out and, after he splashed her with toilet water and she had a freak-out about it, he made it clear that he needed to go out and she opened the door. And he then proceeded to run off and NOT go back into the house after doing his business becaaaaaaaaaaaaause?
Arthur apologizes to Pal, and then it turns out that Pal has to urinate again, which he promptly does in D.W.'s sandbox. Apparently Pal became convinced that he was a cat.
What's the Verdict?
Eh. For Arthur's first movie (unless you count the TV movies, which the DVD cover didn't), this was pretty blah. A couple of the jokes were funny, particularly Buster's, and the songs were decent, but the plot wasn't very engaging, and the animation... yeesh. I still don't understand why they didn't just have it in 2D like the show. It's obviously not the worst animated movie I've ever seen, but unless you're a HUGE Arthur fan, I wouldn't recommend watching it.
But I DO recommend reading this much, much funnier review of the movie:
https://arthur-recaps.tumblr.com/post/46780419844/arthur-recap-arthurs-missing-pal
And yes, I'm perfectly aware that I made several of the same points as that reviewer did. I was actually reluctant to do a review of this movie before it was requested because I was afraid that I'd just wind up copying her. I tried so hard not to. I'm sorry.
