There’s something eerily familiar about See Spot Run. You'd swear you’ve seen it before. And, if you’ve seen Turner & Hooch or K-9, you have. The film — director John Whitesell’s feature debut — stays doggedly faithful to the take-a-bite-out-of-crime formula.

David Arquette is Gordon, a postal worker with — ta-dah! — an aversion to dogs. For reasons too dumb to go into here, Gordon not only finds himself harboring an FBI-issue bull mastiff but is also stuck with James (Angus Jones), a neighbor’s kid who leaves little puddles of cute behind him. Pug-ugly mobsters try to kill the dog. Dog triumphs. Man, dog, and boy bond. Credits.

See Spot Run aims for anarchic comedy but ends up feeling merely chaotic. The dialogue is Schindler’s List funny. The supporting actors — Paul Sorvino (a mob boss) and Michael Clark Duncan (an FBI agent) — ham it up with ho-hum apathy. Even the congenitally madcap Arquette seems only semi-committed to the affair.

But we don’t go to these movies for the acting or the plot — we go for the dog. This is where the film falls flat. Spot’s repertoire consists of (a) looking on with near-human facial expressions and (b) knocking people over — like a four-legged Steven Seagal. There is one funny gag involving a game of fetch (let’s just say that the ball is no squeaky toy), but otherwise this one could have been called See Spot Plod.