Star Rating:

Pudsey the Dog: The Movie

Director: Nick Moore

Actors: Jessica Hynes

Release Date: Saturday 30th November 2013

Genre(s): Animation

Running time: 87 minutes

The winner of 2012’s Britain's Got Talent has now got his own movie, based also solely on the fact that he can stand on both four AND two legs, which makes him at least as talented as the likes of Jessica Simpson or Kellan Lutz, and if they can have movie careers, why not Pudsey The Dog? Voiced by Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams (small world, eh?), Pudsey is sick of being used as a prop in movies, and decides to have a day of fun in London. One excruciatingly auto-tuned montage later, and Pudsey kinda nearly but not really decides that he’s feeling a bit lonely, and helps out a group of kids being bullied. They bring him home to their single Mum (Jessica Hynes, falling a long way from Spaced), just as the whole family is being moved to a cottage in the middle of the countryside.

From there, things just seem to... happen. Not in any kind of eventful way, there’s no sense of this story going anywhere, as it's almost an hour into the film before someone realises that there isn't actually a plot taking place, and in drops the old Developer-Wants-To-Build-New-Things-Where-Old-Things-Are chestnut.

It's difficult to put into words just how bad Pudsey The Dog: The Movie actually is. It’s definitely the worst kids movie released this year, with nary a message to be delivered amongst the seemingly endless repeated footage (a sure sign of feck all budget) and those god-forsaken auto-tuned montages (they couldn't stop at just the one?). Walliams doesn't deliver one funny line, the creepy mouth-warping when the animals talk is less reminiscent of Babe and more likely to stir up horror movie memories, the kids aren't given a single thing to do other than 'not fit in'... and on and on it goes, for 87 confounding minutes.

At one point, a pig that thinks it's a chicken is convinced it's just laid an egg, but it hasn't. It's just had a big poop. And there we have it. Pudsey The Dog: The Movie. A big poop.