See Spot Run
Way back in the mists of time, the first mail-delivering caveman must have done something absolutely unforgivable to the first dog he met, that the antagonism towards mailmen got ingrained into the DNA of all dogs thereafter.
In the movie See Spot Run, Gordon, the mailman, was fully-equipped to deal with dogs of all shapes and sizes. Until he met Spot aka Agent 11, an absolutely well-trained canine member of the FBI drug-busting team.
| Amazon |
Warner Bros Pictures celebrated the start of the second millenium with the production of the movie See Spot Run. John Whitesell was put in charge of directing from the story written by Andrew Deane, Michael Alexander Miller and George Gallo with screenplay by George Gallo, Gregory Poirier, Dan Baron and Chris Faber. David Arquette played Gordon, the mailman, Leslie Bibb played Stephanie, the single mother, Angus T. Jones played James, Stephanie’s son, and Paul Sorvino played Sonny Talia, the villain. The star of the movie, Spot aka Agent 11, was played by Bob, a Bullmastiff.
The Bullmastiff is a large member of the Working Dog Group. Its general appearance and demeanor is one of solidity in generous proportions. In the 19th century, Bullmastiffs were developed by gamekeepers to guard estates and to apprehend poachers. Its forebears include the English Mastiff and the Old English Bulldog. Despite its no-nonsense face and athletic build, it is actually a very docile and obedient dog, thus making it a favorite as a family pet.
According to the American Kennel Club, only three colors are acceptable, which are fawn, red or brindle, with no white markings. The standard height, for a male, is 63 to 69 centimeters at the withers, with weight between 45 to 54 kilograms. Female Bullmastiffs, of course, are a bit shorter and lighter.
Due to its heritage as a guard dog on estates, the Bullmastiff is a very independent dog and is apt to take things into its own hands, or paws. It can be trained, if done properly, to look to its owner for permission before doing whatever it thought was necessary to be done. Interestingly, a Bullmastiff can get on quite well with the family house cat.
In the See Spot Run movie, the canine star was actually a highly-trained member of the FBI canine corps named Agent 11. It never had a normal puppyhood and all that it really cared about was getting the job done. All this was to change when Agent 11, unintentionally, entered a mailman’s house, while running away from an assassination attempt on his life.
Murdoch, the mailman, was already having a problem coping with the son of his single mother neighbor, Stephanie, who left her son in his care while she attended to an out-of-town business affair. For James, her son, Agent 11 was a gift from heaven and he renamed Agent 11 Spot.
This would have been an ideal situation except that Sonny Talia, a mafia boss, was deadset on seeing Spot dead. His vendetta was understandable because, in an earlier encounter, Spot relieved Sonny of a piece of very precious bodily part.
In the meantime, Gordon and James tried their best to get Spot to behave like a dog was supposed to. With his prior rigorous FBI training, it was quite a while before Spot began to play ball, so to say. Well, play as well as anyone could while keeping one step ahead of the baddies.
Spot met Sonny for a return bout and Sonny was totally relieved of his manly possessions before being escorted to a prolonged sojourn of peace and solitude at the pleasure of the state. Spot’s FBI partner came to take him back to work. James was bereft. Surprisingly, Murdoch was not exactly jumping with joy.
So, in the end, did Gordon and James go back to their previous dogless lives? See the See Spot Run DVD to find out. And see if you can keep as straight a poker face as Spot did when things take a hilarious turn.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.