Bailey’s Billion$: Liz Braun at The Toronto Sun had the kindest words for David Devine’s talking-dog picture, noting that its frolicking animals and cartoonish bad guys will go over well with kids. ‘Parents,’ she writes, after reminding them that theaters are air-conditioned, ‘it doesn’t get much better than this.’

Although even she thought the script, co-written by Mary Walsh, was ‘needlessly overplotted’ – siding with Jennie Punter at The Globe and Mail, who growled at the ‘silly subplots… and not enough doggie action.’ Punter was happier with ‘the delightfully evil’ Tim Curry and Jennifer Tilly, applauding their schemes and rampant scenery chewing as the pic’s most entertaining moments.

Not so, says Peter Howell at The Toronto Star, who derides talking-animal movies as ‘kid-flick contagions,’ pities Curry for his involvement, and lifts his leg on the whole picture as an ‘unhappy flashback of the tax-shelter days.’