See Spot Run

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Beyond being entertained, I was delighted by the movie's outpouring of slapstick invention (one crazed sequence in a pet store has all the pawmarks of a classic), and the genial energy of its star, David Arquette.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Fart, feces and gonad gags notwithstanding, this knockabout comedy is no more vulgar than most contemporary children's films, and more good-natured than many.

Film.com Tom Keogh

The filmmakers went for cheap laughs as well as for some a little harder-earned. The only thing pure about this film is the dog, and he's magnificent.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

All of this comedy's jokes are old.

LA Weekly Paul Malcolm

It's finally a hilarious and cuddly flashback from the dog's point of view, to his training as a pup, that marks the moment when the film finds its sweetly moronic legs.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Movies like this demonstrate that when it comes to stupidity and vulgarity, only the best will do for our children.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Do your kids a favor - and take them to see something more worthwhile than the relentlessly vulgar and stupid See Spot Run.

Chicago Tribune Loren King

Give David Arquette credit. He shares nearly all his screen time in See Spot Run with a clever canine and a cute kid and still manages to pull off his usual nutty-slapstick routine with gusto.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

See Spot Run isn't solely responsible for the dumbing down of movies, but it's part of the dismal phenomenon.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Oak-stiff and witless, but a few scenes muster up embarrassed chuckles.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Just a few guilty laughs, a predictable resolution and repeated close-ups of that dog jerking its head to one side, doing the cute thing.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The movie equivalent of a box of Froot Loops followed by a half-gallon Pepsi chaser.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It's enough to encourage the aspiring film makers in the audience, no matter how wee in age, to yell "Cut!"

Miami Herald Sara Wildberger

PG? Please. Might as well take a kid to Hannibal. At least that one was funnier and didn't implicate any noble breeds in its violence -- just humans.

San Francisco Chronicle Wesley Morris

Brutally dumb canine comedy.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Someone should have treated See Spot Run like a bone and buried it.

Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour

The gags, almost all of which involve the passage of gases and liquids, move at a fast-enough clip to keep you awake throughout. For which this review expresses a sorrow as profound as the sympathy it feels for all the actors.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

How do you screw up a family movie that has a cute bull mastiff, a cute 6-year-old and David Arquette playing a mailman? Apparently by unleashing half a dozen writers to gnaw it to pieces and entrusting the result to a TV director (John Whitesell of "Cosby" and "Roseanne") with little sense of how to tell a story longer than six minutes.

Variety Robert Koehler

Gruff and downright smelly, especially when star David Arquette is forced at one point to flop around in a pile of doggy doo.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

The script is simultaneously boring and breathlessly busy, and it really gives Arquette a beating, as scene after scene subjects him to electrocution, dog attack, encasement in bubble wrap, public pantlessness, assault by the hearing-impaired, a fishbowl on the head, and gluteal paralysis caused by poisonous sea urchins.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

See critic run. Oh, for the days of Smell-a-Vision.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Personally, I'd say that it was about time Arquette was leashed.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's hard to believe that five different writers took credit for this feeble story and script. Who says failure is an orphan?