UnderDog 2007

To save the day, here comes Underdog, a 1970s Saturday morning cartoon transformed to glorious, semi-CGI animated life; it’s a talking animal live-action film--à la BABE--with wisecracks aplenty. Voiced by Jason Lee, Underdog is the joke of the K-9 police force after his weakness for ham disrupts a public ceremony. Dejectedly, he lets himself get abducted for an animal experiment by a mad scientist, Dr. Simon Barsinister (Peter Dinklage). He escapes, doused in experimental chemicals, to become a dog with 80 times his normal strength. Jim Belushi embodies the sad-sack security guard at the laboratory who finds Underdog and takes him home as a playmate for his alienated tweener son (Alex Neuberger).

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Charlotte's Web

Gary Winick (THIRTEEN GOING ON 30) had a lot to live up to in remaking a beloved children's movie, itself based on the classic novel by E. B. White, but this 2006 live-action version more than fulfills its promise. With droll '50s-inspired art direction, low-key and earnest performances, and the cutest ensemble cast of farm animals since BABE, Winick maintains the deeply moral (though not moralistic) themes of the original novel and also injects some mild humor and scenes of peril and adventure.