Dudley Do-Right Does A Movie

Say hello to our little friend.

Yep, my Pick My Movie Tag is very much alive and flourishing, and back in May Sally from 18 Cinema Lane tapped me in to review a movie from the 90s that I dislike.

Heh. Challenge accepted. Oh boy. Prepare thyselves for 1999’s Dudley Do-Right. I was always ambivalent about this series because it just didn’t grab me, and looking at it now, it seems to help perpetuate the myth that villains in Victorian melodramas and silent films frequently tied helpless damsels to railroad tracks. Also, seeing as the cartoons in the Dudley Do-Right series usually ran about five minutes (see one of the original episodes here), does the canon stand up to being stretched out to an hour-and-ten-minute movie?

The short answer is no, it doesn’t.

Dudley Do-Right opens with a Fractured Fairy Tales cartoon before the movie, “The Phox, the Lox and the Box,” and that’s all it is. We see a wolf get locked in a trunk and not much else. It adds six minutes to the movie’s total runtime.

As for the actual movie, when we finally get there, it’s an origin story. We see Dudley, Nell Fenwick, and Snidely Whiplash as kids in Semi-Happy Valley. They’re all friends, but they all have different ideas about life. Dudley, of course, wants to be a Royal Canadian Mountie. Nell wants to travel the world. Snidely wants to be a villain because the villains look cool. Dudley’s faithful horse stands off to the side being Horse, of course.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Dudley’s a Mountie. Snidely’s a villain. Nell’s not only seen the world but was the Canadian Ambassador to Guam. Horse is still Horse, althought now he’s very gassy and he doesn’t mind letting it out from both ends. He also blows a lot of raspberries at Dudley, who spends a lot of time going after Snidely because as a villain he’s supposed to cause various kinds of mayhem around town. Among other things, he and his cohorts have robbed the local bank. Instead of sharing the loot, though, Snidely fools his gang into thinking he’s absconded to the Sudan with all the gold, and of course they follow him.

Dudley and Snidely meet on a regular basis, too. One night Dudley catches Snidely coming out of an abandoned mine, and Snidely’s cover story is that he was looking for vampires. Brain that he is, Dudley buys it, and he’s so distracted by it that he’s a little slow to catch on to Snidely’s next scheme. While Dudley and Nan are at a dinner show put on by the local Kumquat Tribe, Semi-Happy Valley’s poorest man, Kim J. Darling, discovers the gold nuggets Snidely has planted all over the local streams and lakes.

Prosperity suddenly comes to town, as do a lot of new faces, and Snidely takes over and milks it for all it’s worth. He even has his own extensive line of merch. Dudley gets fired and ends up taking self-defense lessons from Mr. Darling, who turns out to be a combination of Mr. Miyagi and Yoda. Oh, and there’s a love triangle between Dudley and Nan and Snidely. And quite a few song-and-dance numbers.

This movie should be campy and silly and over the top, which it is. Brendan Fraser and Alfred Molina are really good at cartoon-y, broad schtick. Sarah Jessica Parker shines in the dance sequences in particular. Eric Idle is Eric Idle, mostly, although he’s very, very held in by the script.

Problem is, the movie is mostly unfunny crap. It released after Blast From the Past and The Mummy, so it was a time when Fraser was really hitting his stride as a leading man. I think Dudley Do-Right was a paycheck picture for him, though, because I can’t remember any TV spots or publicity surrounding the film, and of course the reviews were terrible. Maybe Universal thought it was better to keep this one as quiet as possible, who knows, and I can’t blame them if that was the case.

I know logic is not a priority in a movie like this and it’s not meant to be taken seriously, but things really go beyond the pale. For instance, if Snidley Whiplash is able to line the local waterways with gold nuggets, what is he doing trying to snooker people in the first place? He doesn’t need an evil plot; he needs a one-way flight to Grand Cayman. Or maybe he really should have gone to the Sudan. Snide’s addicted to the baddie stuff, though, because there wouldn’t be a plot without him.

Also, apparently the only eligibility requirement to be a Canadian Mountie in Semi-Happy Valley is donning the uniform and looking authoritative and stuff, preferably with one’s boot-clad feet on the desk, hence Dudley’s How To Fight Like A Man lessons with the old prospector. It seems like filler and a way of keeping Eric Idle onscreen longer; not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he’s so much better than this. If they had just let him ad-lib it would have helped so, so much.

Oh, and the “Indian Love Call” motif got annoying after the first time. Even the characters got annoyed with it. I don’t know why they tried to spoof Rose Marie in the first place, but it does because Mounties. Other than that it’s a tragic movie that, among other things, features Jimmy Stewart playing Jeannette MacDonald’s ex-convict brother, back when Hollywood didn’t know what to do with Stewart.

I think the bottom line with Dudley Do-Right is that while a seven-minute cartoon can be adapted into a feature film, whether or not it should be is another matter entirely.

All right, now that Dudley‘s out of the way (thank goodness), let’s move on to the nifty tag housekeeping stuff. First of all, here are…

The Tag Rules

• Nominate one or more people to review the film or films of your choice. Or you can request they review something from a certain year, genre, or star. Everyone can review the same thing, or you can request each person cover something different. As long as it’s something they haven’t written about yet, you’re good.
• Nominees are allowed to request a different pick for whatever reason no more than five times. Stuff happens. We all know it.
• Nominees must thank the person who nominated them and provide a link their blog.
• Nominees may nominate others to keep the tag going. Picking the person who nominated them is allowed, or they can nominate someone else. Maybe both.
• All participants need to include these rules in their post, whether they’re nominees or picking nominees.
• All participants should use the “Pick My Movie” banner or something similar in their posts.
• Have fun!

And now for our wonderful nominees:

• Maddy from Classic Film and TV Corner
• The Metzinger Sisters from Silver Scenes
• Terence from A Shroud of Thoughts
• Erica from Poppity Talks Classic Film
• Phyl from Phyllis Loves Classic Movies

Everyone’s got the same assignment this time: Review an American film adapted from a foreign film (or vice versa). Examples of this would be Father’s Day and My Father the Hero, which were both adapted from French films, and Aabra Ka Daabra, which is the Bollywood rip-off of Harry Potter. Hope everyone has fun with this, and thanks again to Sally for nominating me!

A new installment of “During World War Two” is on the way Tuesday. It’s gonna be a crazy day, y’all, because I’m going to see The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Grand Turismo (watch my Substack page for the reviews). Plus it’s Back To School Night at one of the schools I serve at, so that means early release. Good thing the mall and the schools are only ten minutes apart. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all on Tuesday…

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Dudley Do-Right is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.

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