I think he was pretty much with The Mandalorian, but WandaVision? Loki? Who knows what his seven-year-old brain made of the existential themes and space-time conundrums of those shows.
The same has probably been true for many, or at least some, of the Marvel movies we've watched. I don't suppose our Saturday night family movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, was too taxing on his noodle, but he was showing a propensity to talk and squirm, despite all other evidence that he was enjoying himself.
Whether or not he gets the same things out of these movies and TV shows as we do, he sits through them dutifully, never complaining that they are beyond him, and only asking a minimum of clarifying questions. I imagine at least part of the time he is just going with the flow.
And sometimes, we just need to compensate him for his good nature.
Which is why our second family movie of this past weekend was the one you see in this poster, Dog Gone Trouble.
Look, it wasn't nearly as bad as you might expect. It wasn't good, but I liked it better as it went along.
But my younger son liked it the whole time, and that's the point.
And his mother did a great job pretending that she liked it. She laughed at only the slightest provocations, moments that I knew she did not actually find funny. She's good that way. Our roles seem to have become established here, where she plays it up while I sit there in a mostly stony silence, half-heartedly praising it if forced to make a comment on the topic. I mean, being a film critic has to count for something, doesn't it?
It's funny the role my cinephile snobbery plays in it, though. My starting to like it a bit better was, in part, the result of realizing that there was legitimate vocal talent involved. I don't really know Big Sean, who voices the main character, but I know he's famous. I was more interested in seeing names like Pamela Adlon, Joel McHale, Harland Williams and Snoop Dogg appearing among the supporting cast. I mean, none of those people are exactly A-listers, they're just people who aren't willing to turn down ten grand for a day's work. I probably wouldn't be either.
It did make me wonder though -- changing topics slightly here, and this could be its own post if I weren't getting so prolific and so backed up on my writing -- how many times Snoop Dogg has played an animated dog. (Yep, that's about typical of the level of cleverness of Dog Gone Trouble.)
Now, this is not nearly as easy to research as you might imagine. Do you know how many acting credits Snoop Dogg has on IMDB?
250.
Quite the round number there, and it includes some projects that are only rumored or in pre-poduction. But it gives you some idea how busy he's been, in all sorts of different projects that might make their way onto IMDB. Music videos make up a big share of those.
Interestingly, this does not include credits where he's credited as himself. I was sure that it would, but that list is ... wait for it ... more than twice the length. He has 513 'Self' credits on IMDB. (Which I guess is mostly appearances on talk shows and the like, as his credits playing himself do appear as acting credits.)
Don't ever sacrifice that street cred, Snoop.
Another thing I learned about Snoop Dogg? He has the same birthday as I do. He's two years older than I am. That's pretty cool. (So yes, I still think Snoop Dogg is cool even though he now shills and writes raps for the Australian food delivery service Menulog.)
(Whoa, just after I wrote those words, Snoop's Menulog commercial came on while my son was watching YouTube in the other room.)
Weirdly enough, I could only find one other instance of Snoop playing a dog, and you have to go all the way back to 2005. He played a bloodhound named Lightning in the movie Racing Stripes, which I saw and reviewed at the time.
I have no idea how that's the case, but I did scroll through the credits a second time just to be sure. How he wasn't in The Secret Life of Pets or something, I don't know. (He's done other animated voices, such as a snail in Turbo and Cousin It in The Addams Family, but they weren't dogs.)
It's too bad because I had a bit all worked out for when Snoop received the script for Dog Gone Trouble from his agent. Just imagine him saying this with a touch of both disdain and self-loathing in his signature voice: "Sure I'll play a fuckin' animated dog. Again."
Hey, there's always Menulog.
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