Kirk Cameron needs Jesus after acting in You Lucky Dog

And I need a bath.

First things first, rest in peace, Uncle Phil. There, I got the J. Cole reference/James Avery joke out of the way. Does it fit with the rest of the review? Does it matter?

Anyway, before we get into the movie, let’s talk a bit about Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron is an actor from the popular 80s sitcom Growing Pains. He converted to Christianity in the later years of the show. Since then, he’s spent his time producing and acting in Christian films, some of which come across as Christian propaganda.

Then there was that time he was in some video about how God exists because a banana fits perfectly in the human hand. And he took a Darwin quote way out of context.

Why did I bring this up? Because that knowledge makes watching Kirk Cameron act like a dog for 90 minutes needlessly obnoxious, yet incredibly satisfying.

You Lucky Dog (1998) is a film with such a wildly silly premise that typing it out only makes it sound worse. Kirk Cameron is a ‘dog whisperer’ who gained fame as a kid when he found out he could talk to his dog. The opening montage is made up of newspaper clippings of this

Fast forward a decade or two and Kirk runs his own independent dog whispering office. He wasn’t able to talk to dogs anymore for years until he met this old millionaire’s dog, Lucky. After an odd but insightful meeting with the man, Mr, Fister, and his dog, the man dies two weeks later.

Despite meeting him only once, Mr. Fister apparently trusted Kirk Cameron more than his own niece and nephews. That’s why he inherited Fister’s wealth and mansion instead of them. To be fair, his niece and nephews were pretty damn insufferable.

As long as he is seen as a competent caretaker for Lucky, he is allowed to keep it. The problem? Whenever Lucky gets excited, Kirk Cameron acts like the dog, complete with barking and running on all fours.

Obviously, this leads to hilarious shenanigans, such as Kirk and the dog running around and stealing food from a mall food court. Sadly, he never gets arrested for any of these things, because he’s rich and it doesn’t matter! The things you can get away with if you have millions of dollars…

Most of the antics that occur when the dog controls Kirk Cameron could easily be avoided if he didn’t take the damn dog everywhere, But no, Kirk Cameron and the chauffeur, James Avery (Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — *winks at first line of this review*) want to take Lucky shopping to make him a dog’s paradise home. At least their intentions are good, I suppose.

While this is happening, the man’s nephews and niece are trying to prove that Kirk Cameron is either crazy, lying about talking to the dog, or both. For some reason, they tried to kidnap Lucky and failed, so they just sue Kirk Cameron instead. If only they met the lawyer after the attempted kidnapping instead of before. It probably would have made a pretty funny surprise, and would be exactly what rich, selfish snobs like them would do.

There’s also the man’s lawyer/Kirk’s love interest who is mostly forgettable, but is a divorced woman with a daughter. I’m impressed that the character had that much backstory, yet still managed to be so two-dimensional. DCOMs never cease to surprise me.

Speaking of surprises, the movie actually managed to get me in the end. When they all go to court about Kirk and Lucky, the dog channels his thoughts through Kirk and reveals that one of the nephews poisoned the old man. I wasn’t expecting them to pull something that dark in a movie about a man who acts like a dog.

To add to the dark elements, this might be one of the few DCOMs where a character has and shoots a gun. Granted, they were in a courtroom and that 100 percent would not have made it through security, but that is still something. I’d love to see Disney Channel do something like that in their more recent ones. Between this and the smoking and mild swearing in Northern Lights, I can’t love the lax 1990s censors any more than I do now.

Overall, this movie was…fine. Kirk Cameron acting like a dog really got to me at first, but I somewhat enjoyed the ending, and it was a nice to see James Avery in it.

This review is more positive than I expected. Maybe I criticized the previous films too harshly. They’re made-for-TV movies on the Disney Channel, after all. This movie still blows, though.

What’s next? Brink? This is the first DCOM so far that I’ve heard of, though I’ve never seen it. Bring it on!

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