Teacher's Pet
There's a strain of children's entertainment -- let's call it Toddler Anarchy -- that got its start in the mid-1980s with ''Pee-wee's Playhouse'' and the emergence of Nickelodeon as a cable-TV powerhouse. Antic and subversive, playing as groovy fun to kids and hilarious camp to parents, such developments fizzed with the energy of such underground artists as Gary Panter and renegade animators like John ''Ren and Stimpy'' Kricfalusi.
All cultural movements grind to a halt sooner or later, and ''Teacher's Pet'' is evidence that Toddler Anarchy has finally had the edges planed off it by the mainstream. The creation of busy-bee illustrator Gary Baseman -- whose nubby, joyfully cartoonish work graces everything from New York Times articles to the Cranium game in your play-closet -- the movie is a feature-length version of the animated TV show that airs on cable TV's Toon Disney channel. Maybe that's a hint right there: Visually eccentric, hyperactive as all get-out, and a wispy 67 minutes long, ''Teacher's Pet'' is ultimately lightweight and forgettable. Behind the gonzo drawing style, it's Disney business as usual.
Baseman's visual sense and some serious vocal talent give ''Pet'' what oomph it has. The hero is Spot (Nathan Lane), a dog so devoted to his young owner Leonard (Shaun Fleming) that he disguises himself as a bespectacled boy named Scott and tags along to school. Leonard's mother, Mrs. Helperman (Debra Jo Rupp from ''That '70s Show'') is their teacher, but in the eternal tradition of TV moms, she's chirpy and clueless. Throw in a tough-talking parrot (Jerry Stiller) and a timid, fish-shaped house cat (David Ogden Stiers), and you've got yourself a pretty funny little show.
The movie sets its sights higher, sending Leonard and his mom to Florida on vacation while Spot follows, seeking a mad scientist named Dr. Ivan Krank (Kelsey Grammer) who can turn him into a human. Since Krank hasn't accounted for dog years, Spot is transformed into a middle-age man. Drollery and musical numbers ensue.
Baseman's characters look like Mexican Day of the Dead figures with meat on their bones: White-faced and outlined with thick brush strokes, they're ghoulish and appealingly childlike. He and director Timothy Bjorklund spin this confection as fast as they can, with a vaudeville routine in which Spot is forced to impersonate all his ''human'' relatives to fool Leonard's mom and a manic song interlude about the 50 states. But it's telling that the number is peppy without actually being clever, and that such singular talents as Megan Mullally and Paul Reubens -- Pee-wee himself! -- are wasted in small roles.
Lane is a trouper as always, and Grammer delivers his pastiche Dr. Frankenstein dialogue with lugubrious gusto -- so much so that the icky-morbid laboratory scenes may freak out very young children. Older kids (such as the members of the reviewer's own focus group, ages 6 and 8) may come out unsettled, amused, and with the gnawing sense that they've seen it all before. ''Teacher's Pet'' barrels along on a diverting enough sugar high, but in the hangover that follows you may wonder where the wonder was.
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