E-Mail This Article to a Friend GOOD BOY!

Good Boy!, the new children’s film from director John Robert Hoffman, is about dogs from outer space. Talking dogs from outer space. One of them, played by a real dog and voiced by Matthew Broderick, visits Earth to check in on how Earth dogs are progressing with the whole world-domination thing, apparently the reason they came here in the first place. Needless to say, he is disappointed by what he finds. He becomes the pet and eventual friend of a lonely boy, played with a minimum of cloying cuteness by Liam Aiken, who can understand the dogs because of a technological glitch in one of the spaceship’s functions. That boy and dog become wary allies and, eventually, trusting friends is a forgone conclusion. That this isn’t actually as terrible as it sounds, however, is something of a surprise. The story is out there enough to be kind of fun, and even if the jokes are lame and the movie drags toward the end, it conveys a kind of sweetness that makes it almost bearable. The neighborhood dogs, voiced by Brittany Murphy and Delta Burke, among others, are blandly annoying, and Molly Shannon and Kevin Nealon are wasted as clueless but caring parents. A movie about dogs from space was probably inevitable, and it could have been worse. (87 minutes.)