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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/underdog_live_action.gif]]
2
3A live-action film based on the original ''WesternAnimation/{{Underdog}}'' animated series that was made in 2007 by Creator/{{Disney}}. It tried to reinvent a FunnyAnimal cartoon as a snarky comedy starring an actual dog. It is directed by Frederik Du Chau and written by Adam Rifkin, Joe Piscatella and Craig A. Williams.
4
5A small police beagle (voiced by Creator/JasonLee) ridiculed for his terrible sense of smell is captured by the MadScientist Simon Barsinister (Creator/PeterDinklage) and his dimwitted henchman Cad Lackey (Creator/PatrickWarburton) to perform experiments on. These grant the dog superpowers and it escapes. He is found by retired cop Dan Unger ([[Creator/JamesBelushi Jim Belushi]]) and his teenage son Jack (Alex Neuberger) and given the name Shoeshine. Jack discovers Shoeshine's secret when the dog starts talking to him and convinces him to become a superhero under the name Underdog. But Bar Sinister is looking for Underdog to try to gain the powers for himself.
6
7The film also stars Creator/JohnSlattery as the Capitol City mayor, Creator/BradGarrett as Riff Raff and Creator/AmyAdams as Polly Purebred.
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9----
10!!Underdog provides examples of:
11* ActorAllusion:
12** This isn't the first time [[Creator/JamesBelushi Jim Belushi]] played [[Film/{{K91989}} a cop who works with a dog]].
13** This also isn't the first time Creator/PatrickWarburton played [[WesternAnimation/TheEmperorsNewGroove the villain's dimwitted sidekick in a Disney film]].
14* AdaptationDistillation: Shoeshine, as Underdog, [[RhymesOnADime rhymes]] far less in the film than the cartoon. In fact, he gets called out on this by Polly because it was quickly getting old.
15* AdaptationSpeciesChange: Riff Raff is changed from a wolf to a Rottweiler.
16* AndStarring: The cast roll here ends "with Creator/AmyAdams as the voice of Polly Purebred and Creator/JasonLee as the voice of Underdog".
17* AnimalTalk: Animals understand each other, and can understand humans, but only Shoeshine can speak when he has his powers.
18* AnimalSuperheroes
19* AnthropomorphicShift: Inverted: all the dog characters are reduced from FunnyAnimals to [[NearlyNormalAnimal nearly normal animals]].
20* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Underdog says two things to Barsinister's German Shepherds that push their TheDogBitesBack moment.
21-->"Has he even given any of you a name?"\
22"Who is he to call you worthless?"
23* BadBoss: Barsinister doesn't give any of his German Shepherds names, doesn't feed them treats, and calls them "worthless mutts" when they don't immediately kill Underdog. {{Lampshaded}} by Underdog: "If he was a better boss, he'd be able to afford a higher quality sidekick!"
24* BatmanCanBreatheInSpace: Underdog gets hurled out of Earth's atmosphere by the bomb he buries, but that doesn't make any difference.
25* BigBad: Dr. Simon Bar Sinister is responsible for all of the danger in the plot.
26* CanonForeigner: Everyone except Underdog, Polly, Simon, Cad and Riff-Raff. Kinda justified since the show never really had other recurring characters outside those five (not counting the various other segments). Plus the animal characters in cartoon are all sapient and human-like.
27* CatchPhrase:
28** Invoked with bar Sinister's "Simon says..."
29** Also, after Jack tells him he needs one, Underdog goes through several, winding up with "There's no need to fear; Underdog is here."
30* ChekhovsSkill: Shoeshine's bad sense of smell. And his frisbee-catching, [[RuleOfThree and his super-speed digging.]]
31* ClarkKenting: ''Nobody'' recognizes Shoeshine despite not even wearing glasses.[[note]]To be fair, a lot of dogs look alike to people. And one civilian ''does'' note the resemblance. This doesn't excuse that Polly can't tell the difference, despite Shoeshine not even changing his voice as Underdog.[[/note]]
32* CompanyCrossReferences: Dogs on a date batting meatballs back and forth? ''WesternAnimation/LadyAndTheTramp''. One of them is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, similar to the movie.
33* ConeOfShame: Underdog wears this to avoid being recognized.
34* DeadpanSnarker: Several characters, but notably Shoeshine and Bar Sinister.
35* DemotedToExtra: In the show, Riff-Raff was the most often-recurring villain aside from Barsinister and regularly posed a threat. Here he's just a random antagonistic dog Shoeshine encounters a couple times and isn't a match for Shoeshine's powers.
36* DepravedDwarf: Simon of course.
37* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler: Underdog]], at the end.
38* DoWrongRight: One of Jack's teachers when he attempts to skip a class: "I don't know what disappoints me more. That you forged a note to get out of class, or that you did it so poorly you couldn't even fool a high-school gym teacher."
39* TheDragon: Cad Lackey, [[MutuallyUnequalRelationship although he thinks]] he is in a BigBadDuumvirate with Dr. Simon Bar Sinister.
40* GoingForTheBigScoop: Polly Purebred's owner, Molly, evokes this, and runs into the same kind of trouble.
41* GirlsStareAtSceneryBoysStareAtGirls:
42-->'''Polly''': It's beautiful, isn't it?
43-->'''Underdog''': Yes, you are. Uh... you are right about that.
44* HerosFirstRescue: Shoeshine saves Molly and Polly from muggers.
45* HeroicDog: Who do you think?
46* HumanFocusedAdaptation
47* IHaveYourWife: Barsinister pulls this on Underdog. Given that Underdog is an {{Expy}} of [[ComicBook/KryptoTheSuperdog Krypto]], this worked about as well as you would expect.
48* IJustWantToBeNormal: Shoeshine.
49* ImmediateSelfContradiction: After Cad catches her spying and ties her up, Molly tells him that he and his leader won't go unpunished for their plots. Cad retorts that they're partners. Molly asks their reasons for the current plot. Immediately, Cad answers that his partner threatened to sack him if he didn't follow orders.
50* InNameOnly: Well, it uses some of the names from the cartoon. Everything else is different.
51* InsistentTerminology: Barsinister is Cad's "partner", not his "boss".
52* IronicEcho:
53** After Barsinister finds out Underdog's secret identity, he kidnaps Dan to force him to call the dog. In the middle of the scientist's rant, Dan calls him insane. Barsinister roars back, "I prefer the term 'visionary'!". Later, Dan goes to apprehend Barsinister, who greets him by calling him a heroic idiot. Dan answers with the same phrase and jabs him with a needle, [[BroughtDownToNormal bringing him down to normal.]]
54** When Barsinister first meets Shoeshine (at this moment, one of his lab animals), the dog whines and the scientist tells him, "It will only hurt a lot." Later, after Underdog has completely torn apart the beliefs Barsinister's German Shepherds have about their master, destroying their loyalty to him, he echoes the phrase.
55* LegoGenetics: The source of Underdog's powers, [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke like most adaptations]], is made to be genetic splicing of various animals. Notably, Underdog's flight is from eagle DNA, even though he doesn't gain wings.
56* LovesMyAlterEgo: Shoeshine has the same problems as the early Clark Kent did getting his LoveInterest's attention.
57* MadScientist: And is named so by the supporting [[TheCloudCuckooLanderWasRight crazy hairless dog]].
58* ManlyTears: Jack sheds these during [[spoiler:Underdog's DisneyDeath]].
59* MissingMom: It's mentioned ''once'' by Jack that she passed away before the events of the film. A picture frame featuring him, his dad, and a woman who can presumably be said mother appears a few minutes before.
60* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: Barsinister's German Shepherd minions, who turn on him when they realize that he sees them as tools and not as "sparkling individuals."
61* MutuallyUnequalRelationship: Barsinister considers Cad merely a lackey and doesn't even like him very much. By contrast, Cad apparently has some affection for his boss, given his panicked reaction when he falls victim to a lab accident, and believes that they're partners.
62* MythologyGag:
63** The film's intro has [[ClipShow clips from the cartoon]].
64** Underdog's secret identity is named "Shoeshine". In the original cartoon, Underdog's secret identity was as a [[ShoeShineMister shoe shine boy who is named Shoeshine Boy]].
65** Possibly an unintentional one, but while brainstorming ideas for Shoeshine's hero identity, Jack can be seen eating from a box of Cocoa Puffs. UsefulNotes/GeneralMills was a major sponsor of the original ''Underdog'' show and many of its' contemporaries from both Total Television and the closely-linked Creator/JayWard cartoons.
66** When he first dons his iconic outfit, Shoeshine, looking at his reflection, stands up and mimics a bicep flex. His cartoon counterpart would do a similar pose upon transforming.
67** Polly's DistressCall in the cartoon is used an a slightly more snarky manner here, though the film has her wanting to talk to Underdog while the cartoon is whenever she's in danger.
68** A newspaper headline depicting Underdog saving people in a falling elevator has him looking like a modernized version of his cartoon appearance.
69** When Bar Sinister takes Underdog's powers away, he turns them into pills, only for Shoeshine to swallow one of them and regain his powers. The original run had Underdog taking pills to receive and renew his powers; obviously, [[DrugsAreBad most modern reruns]] [[EditedForSyndication cut those parts out]], except when they were integral to the plot.
70** Molly, Polly's human owner, is an aspiring news reporter; Polly herself was a TV news reporter in the cartoon.
71** At the end of the film, Shoeshine changes to his Underdog identity in a phone booth-- and destroys it.
72* NiceJobFixingItVillain: While Barsinister's German Shepherds might have listened to Underdog anyway, Barsinister didn't help his case by calling them "worthless mutts".
73* RacialFaceBlindness: Variant. Shoeshine can't identify a suspicious man who tried to kidnap him (a disguised Cad). In his own defense, he says: ''"How should I know? All you humans look alike.''"
74* ReactiveContinuousScream: This is how Jack and Shoeshine respond to the fact that [[YouCanTalk they can understand each other]], after the latter claims a mess he made was an accident. [[NeverTrustATrailer The teaser trailer]] uses a piece of Shoeshine's dialogue from later in the movie ("Give... the dog... your... foooooood...") in place of what he said in the film proper - to hilarious effect, as it's right after the trailer states that, among the tricks he can do, "[[DoubleMeaning he speaks]]".
75* ReimaginingTheArtifact: The origin of Underdog's powers changing from pills to mad science experiments as the original source is no longer acceptable (see YMMV page on the original cartoon to see why).
76* RemakeCameo: In the Latin Spanish dub, the police chief is voiced by Creator/ArturoMercado, who dubbed Barsinister in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Underdog}}'' animated series.
77* RhymesOnADime: Shoeshine, as Underdog. Though less than his cartoon counterpart.
78* SecretIdentity: Of course.
79* SelfBotchedCatchPhrase: At one point, Underdog is trying to come up with a catch-phrase but constantly screws them up or makes an awful rhyme, before he settles on the classic "There's no need to fear, Underdog is here!"
80* ShoutOut: Lots.
81** Several to the ''Film/{{Superman|FilmSeries}}'' movies.
82** One to the sequence in the first ''Film/SpiderMan1'' movie where the hero gains his powers. And the second one, in the scene with Cad impersonating an old lady while hanging from a building, with an American flag no less.
83** Bar Sinister is a Small Person version of Doctor Doom, complete with scarred face.
84** [[ComicBook/FantasticFour "It's clobbering time!"]]
85** One of the main characters in ''ComicStrip/ThePerishers'' is a dog named Boot, whose mother was Cherry Blossom - named after a well-known British brand of boot polish. And now there's a dog called Shoeshine...
86* TranslationConvention: An extremely confusing example that will make your head explode. When we hear any dog besides Underdog speaking English, we're supposed to pretend that they're barking, but Underdog actually does speak English in-universe. But when he talks to other dogs, we're supposed to pretend he's barking at them.
87* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: While the setting of the original show never even had a name, here the action takes place in the fictitious "Capital City". Addresses and license plates don't specify a state, but the capital building is actually the Rhode Island State House in Providence. (Doesn't help that some shots used the skyline of nearby UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}, while the above poster depicted New York City.)
88* YouCanTalk: What precedes the ReactiveContinuousScream mentioned above. Interestingly, not only is Jack surprised that Shoeshine can talk to him, but Shoeshine is also surprised that he's able to talk ''himself''.
89* YoureInsane: Dan Unger, held hostage by Barsinster calls the mad scientist insane. The latter's response?
90-->'''Barsinsister''': I prefer the term "VISIONARY!"

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