See Spot Run (2001)

Spot, a.k.a. Agent Eleven, the bull mastiff who's a drug sniffing FBI ''agent'' in See Spot Run, doesn't have an especially funny, ugly, or expressive face. He isn't vicious, and he doesn't slobber or bark or show a naughty propensity for, say, trashing people's living rooms. (Compared with this pooch, Tom Hanks' drooling best friend in ''Turner & Hooch'' was a mountain of personality.) He may be the nicest, gentlest, blandest canine to have ever enjoyed the privilege of getting a movie named after him.

David Arquette, a graduate of the bowwow school of comic acting, shows no such modesty. When he does a trick, like letting cereal dribble out of his mouth or grinning like a smarmy stoned idiot who expects to be loved simply for grinning like a smarmy stoned idiot, you don't know whether to pet him or beat him with a rolled up newspaper. Personally, I'd say that it was about time Arquette was leashed.

A sub Adam Sandler ''family'' caper movie, in which Arquette is teamed with a goofy tyke and with Agent Eleven, whom the Mob wants to whack (a contract out on a dog -- ha ha!), ''See Spot Run'' never gets going, but it's dotted with strange seizures of humiliation. Michael Clarke Duncan, as Agent Eleven's partner, is forced to pine for him like a giant child who has lost his daddy, and Arquette, at one point, spends several minutes trapped in a slip sliding duel with doggie doo, until he cries out in defeat, ''I'm covered in caca!'' He certainly is; it's called ''See Spot Run.''

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