DCOM #2: 'You Lucky Dog' (1998)
A story about the dog whisperer to the upper 0.1% of dogs.
You Lucky Dog is a movie about a guy named Jack Morgan, who once was able to read his dog’s mind as a kid and spends his adult life riding that high by playing dog therapist but actually being a hack and a fraud. At the start of the movie, he gets called out by a disgruntled husband of a wife who is worried about her dog’s mental health and threatens that his friend, the mayor, will shut his business down.
Before going home for the day, a wealthy old man named Mr. Windsor, who is very worried about his dog, Lucky. Jack takes Lucky into his office to do his usual sham therapy session, except there’s this whooshing sound and Jack can hear what Lucky is trying to say. Like the good old days? This freaks Jack out, who says he can’t take Lucky on as a patient even though Mr. Windsor persists. Before leaving, Jack mentions that Lucky has been worried about three people who live in the house with Mr. Windsor and the dog, which seems to mean something of importance to the old man.
They leave, and we next see Jack’s office getting cleared out—that guy was, in fact, friends with the mayor and the mayor shut that dog therapy shit down. If you ever feel like you peaked in high school, just look at Jack to feel a little bit better. This guy had a psychic connection with a dog years ago and decided to build an entire business off of it. A whole business off of a skill he could no longer do for the entirety of his working adulthood. This man has never had a real job, but has somehow managed to make enough money for rent and an employee (who does mention she doesn’t get paid consistently). Instead of grifting he could, I don’t know, do any kind of regular job? Even become a real therapist or something. This is the 90s and regular jobs were easy to find and you could buy a house with one of those things. You could get an office and sleep in it easy and still make a decent salary. He could do marketing!
His assistant, who he doesn’t pay, is long gone. She quit that day and we never see her again, even though it’s kind of implied that they’ve known each other a long time. That’s fine, because while his business is getting destroyed by city council, Mr. Windsor’s driver, Calvin, appears to tell Jack that the old guy is dead and Jack needs to come over for some estate planning. What? They knew each other for all of 30 minutes!
We then see a hot estate lawyer (named Allison) reading off the will to Mr. Windsor’s closest relatives: Margaret, Lyle, and Reuben. They’re a bunch of greedy nimwits and they get absolutely nothing in the will. So who gets the $64 million trust fund? Well, Lucky the dog of course. And Mr. Windsor, who noticed how good Jack “communicated” with his dog has chosen Jack to be the trustee of this large fortune. Except it’s not money for Jack, it’s money for the dog.
See, if you wanted your dog to inherit your insane wealth, he wouldn’t be able to do anything with it on his own. Obviously, dogs don’t have credit cards, or thumbs, or the ability to read—skills that you kind of need to have in order to buy stuff and live out your dreams in a human-led, capitalistic world. But if you knew a guy who just so happened to be able to perfectly communicate with a dog, that special guy would be able to execute your last wishes and get everything that the dog would ever want. You’re actually the only guy who can do that successfully.
Jack loves this idea, and moves into the mansion immediately. He seems to have no attachment to any part of his old life. No friends, no family, no things even. The relatives, now kicked out of the only home they’ve ever known with no money (cue tiny violin), hate this. They go to a lawyer who says the only way to break this will is to prove that Jack is not of sound mind. That would be impossible…except…
Something weird has been happening between him and Lucky, almost as if he can actually hear what Lucky’s saying—just like how it was with his old dog! Well that would be great, no problems, perfect ending except there’s a detail we don’t yet know about: when Jack can communicate with a dog, the dog’s spirit is also channeled through to him whenever the dog gets excited. For example, that night Lucky wants to go out and gets really excited about the bone he buried the day before. Now, not only is Lucky running around and barking and digging up the lawn, human Jack’s body (with Lucky speaking his thoughts through Jack and in English) is also doing that. If you didn’t know what was happening, it looks insane. The housekeepers flee that night because they think Jack is possessed by the devil.
After waking up in the morning from the craziest blackout alive, Jack tells the driver what the deal is with his dog channeling powers. The driver takes this information incredibly well. They go to the mall, where Lucky buys tens of thousands of dollars of people furniture and dog toys. Jack has to sign more papers with the hot lawyer Allison, who has a daughter but no husband. Obviously, Jack and Allison are going to imply fuck offscreen. The daughter wants a big family. Jack’s got his work cut out for him. At the mall, which apparently allows giant dogs to go OFF LEASH and BARK EVERYWHERE, Lucky gets excited about a lot of stuff, which results in Jack going nuts too and diving into a trash can. You would think that if your life depended on having a dog act normal, you’d at least leash him up in public. But from what I know about a lot of dog owners, that’s unrealistic.
A good chunk of the movie is a back-and-forth between Jack and Lucky buying an exorbitant amount of toys and treats (Lucky can never want, only have), and Jack trying to hide the fact that he has a bad case of dog brain. There’s a part where the niece, who dresses like Mrs. Peacock from Clue, tries to charm Jack, but Lucky-Jack goes nuts and Jack rips off the back part of her skirt with his teeth. Actually, what the fuck?
All while that’s happening, the cousins are scheming while suffering through living like poor people. They drive a shitty van and stay in motels (sharing one bed that has a vibrator machine attached to it called “Magic Fingers” which also just makes me say, what the fuck?). They’re tired of staking Jack out to prove insanity, so they try kidnapping the dog from the house to then kill him or something. Obviously, it doesn’t work out. But they’ve got another ace up their sleeve: the lawyer from the beginning.
Before going to court like the next day (which would never happen in real life), Allison asks her client if there’s anything she should know about before trying to prove that he’s sane and normal in a court of law. We then hard transition to them in a courtroom, hearing person after person recounting stories of Jack acting like a literal dog. They finally get to prove that Lucky and Jack can mind-meld by saying what the other one can see while facing back-to-back. The court is immediately convinced. We also find out that Lucky saw one of the relatives, Lyle, put poison in Windsor’s drink on the day he died. It was MURDER! Then Lyle pulls out a literal gun and starts shooting up the courtroom, and Lucky gets caught in the gunfire.
This is a kid’s movie though and we’re at the end so thankfully Lucky was just grazed and he is fine. Everyone wins! We then see Lucky and Jack in their dog-wonderland mansion. Then we see Allison and her daughter in the house with another dog. And then another dog, and another dog. Lucky figured out that he could just buy every dog from the pet store and have them all live in their million-dollar doghouse. This is the big family the kid has always dreamed of, and Jack and his hot lawyer girlfriend are definitely boning later.
In the chronological DCOM filmography, I feel like with both Under Wraps and more so with You Lucky Dog, these movies don’t have that DCOM vibe that most of us remember when we were younger. They clearly feel like the last remnants of the Disney Channel Presents kinds of movies before Disney Channel pivoted to their Original Movies series. This isn’t a bad thing—both movies are quite enjoyable and full of a lot of goofs, gags, and jokes. I think You Lucky Dog is the only DCOM that focuses on an adult main character, which definitely makes it feel like a different kind of movie. I will admit, even as a DCOM enjoyer around the year 2000 and on, I have never seen this movie until right now. I don’t think it replayed as much as some of the other ones I’m going to talk about next, and why would it? It’s about a guy who’s kind of horny and has a lot of money, with a lot of physical comedy in between—and we only want to see movies about kids dealing with their parents’ divorce!
It is hard for me, though, as someone who lives with a dog whom I do not love (he is my roommate’s), the idea of knowing what a dog is thinking and also having his spirit channeled into my body sounds like an absolute nightmare. If this movie were to happen to me in my current living situation, I would spend my days barking at gig delivery drivers who are absolutely not paid enough to deal with that. I would also run into my best friend’s kneecaps every single time they moved while at my house. I would also bark and cry every time I vacuumed the floors, used the air fryer, or used my exercise bike.
As someone who knows a little bit about dog care, the idea of letting a dog do whatever the fuck they want every moment of every day is also insane. Dogs don’t know what they want —that’s why people do the stuff for them! If a dog has access to infinite bone and infinite steak, they’re going to have a heart attack in three months tops. There needs to be someone, the pet owner, to be that benevolent being that just so kindly gives them food every day. For an old man to will away for a DOG to have unlimited access to $64 million dollars is just making sure this furry companion will have a short life as the richest dog on Earth. Instead of, like, giving it to human beings in need (could still fuck over his niece and nephews in the end). But at least in this universe, there are no real consequences for the dog whisperer and his dog.
Also?? That many dogs on one property??? I know they’re rich-rich, but that’s so much dog shit to clean up on a daily basis. That driver definitely needs a raise!
A lot of people would love to know what their dog is thinking, but I would rather that shit be blocked in an unbreakable language barrier.
