Critic's Grade: F

Why anyone continues to fund movies starring Rob Schneider I'll never know. It's as if the very concept of "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigilo" wasn't bad enough to nail the coffin of his career shut for good; then they had to go and give us "The Animal," a lifeless, boring movie that pretends to be a comedy when it feels more like an endurance challenge. In it, Schneider plays Marvin Mange, an evidence clerk at his local police department who longs to wear the official cop uniform and be respected by those around him. Through a twist of fate one day, he is left to answer an emergency call on his own, but ends up running off of the road in a freak car accident, waking up much later with little recollection of what happened. As if that weren't enough, now he finds himself taking on the behavior of several animal species, everything from the heightened sense of smell of the canine to the extremely hairy buttocks of the primate.

Now, it's not that "The Animal" doesn't have a good idea behind its idiocy; the concept at work here would have made for a terrific situational comedy were it not for Schneider, who insists on beating every joke into the ground in a barrage of gross-outs and lame gags that just aren't funny anymore. His particular brand of comedy has never really been that engaging for me, and with this movie, it strikes a new low. The requisite story turns could be overlooked if there was actually something to laugh at or smile about, but in the face of such lifeless humor, there's nothing to do but groan at how terribly boring it all it. Even Schneider's obvious enthusiasm in the role, which you would think might merit something for the film as a whole, fails to make anything less agonizing or painless. In summation, this is a real beast of a movie, a comedy that's about as funny as a porcupine quill to the eye.

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