Karate Dog

Considering the title of this straight-to-video bowser, the young target audience of Karate Dog could reasonably expect more than just two scenes of a karate-chopping dog rendered in Scooby Doo-like CGI. But then, kids should learn all about life’s crushing disappointments at an early age. The film’s plot, for lack of a better word, concerns a talking, martial-arts-trained pup who teams up with a computer-geek cop to solve his master’s murder and topple a biotech villain (played—sigh—by Oscar winner Jon Voight). Karate Dog is at least refreshingly free of the wall-to-wall product placement that permeates most family films, and it has enough cute pooches to qualify as a decent juvenile time waster, but parents should put this one on only if they’ve got something to do in the other room.