Or is it barking now? I'm not sure. This sequel to the 1959 Disney classic "The Shaggy D.A." has handed the role of Wilby Daniels over to Dean Jones. He's married now (to the glorious Suzanne Pleshette) and has a pranksterish young son (Shane Sinutko) who is exactly like the unmentioned brother from the first film. With his house robbed (twice!) in a short period, Jones decides to run for D.A. to counter the incompetence of shady current D.A. Keenan Wynn who is being paid off by mob leader Vic Tayback to look the other way.

The return of the ring that made him turn into a dog 17 years before does it again, and that puts a damper on his campaign. unfortunately, there is another old English sheepdog, owned by ice cream man Tim Conway, and Jones keeps switching places with him. Jones is now being sought after by two groups of bad men which also includes the house robber, Richard Balkayan (like when, a fixture as a Disney villain),and Jones joins forces in his dog guise to stop the bad guys.

This film is overloaded with familiar faces from 1970s culture, with Joanne Worley replacing Ruth buzzi or Kay Ballard (obviously busy on the "Freaky Friday" set) as Conway's girlfriend who works in the ice cream factory. A very funny scene has whirly and her staff invading a hotel to try to find the ring which they believe is in the middle of hundreds of strawberry ice cream cakes which leads to the obvious pie fight, and that is the highlight of the film humor wise.

There's also Dick Van Patten as Wynn's crooked assistant, veteran character actress Iris Adrian as Worley's boss and Pat McCormack as a bartender who keeps being distracted by Conway's insistence that his dog can sing and talk. only slightly better than the original, this suffers from a juvenile mentality which made it fine for teenagers like me when it first came out, but has sadly dated.

Pleshette is the saving grace, beautiful as well as feisty and loving, as commanding a presence as she was as Emily on "The Bob Newhart Show". Jones is also quite good, and Conway is doing his "Carol Burnett Show" schtick, but other actors seem to be overwhelmed with cliched one-dimensional characters that they could play in their sleep. While Wynn is playing a character by the name of John Slade, it's obvious that he's still doing Alonzo Hawke, the villain he played in several other Disney films.

Amiable lawyer Wilby Daniels (winningly played by Dean Jones) is running for district attorney. Wilby once again gets stricken by the Borgia ring curse which causes him to transform into a large shaggy sheepdog at inopportune moments. His shady and crooked no-count rival John Slade (a marvelously hearty'n'huffy portrayal by Keenan Wynn) tries to get his hands on said ring so he can fix the election. Director Robert Stevenson, working from a blithely silly script by Don Tait, relates the loopy story at a constant zippy pace, maintains a good-natured and innocuous tone throughout, and stages the expected zany slapstick with considerable panache (a wild pie fight and an equally crazy car chase rate as the definite sidesplitting comic highlights). Moreover, the top-rate cast play their parts with infectiously zesty aplomb: Jones is totally engaging in the lead, Tim Conway is in peak goofy form as eager beaver ice cream man Tim (the scenes with Tim trying to convince other people his dog Elwood can talk are hilarious!),Suzanne Pleshette brings some class to her role as Wilby's supportive wife Betty, Wynn grouches it up with growly gusto as a deliciously broad heavy, plus there are neat supporting contributions from Jo Anne Worley as brassy, chipper lunch lady Katrinka Muggelberg, Dick Van Patten as Slade's obsequious partner Raymond, Vic Tayback as fearsome crime boss Eddie Roschak, Richard Bakalyan as bumbling hoodlum Freddie, and John Fiedler as jolly dog catcher Howie Cummings. Buddy Baker's bouncy score, Fred V. Phillips' sharp cinematography, the nifty make-up f/x, and the jaunty theme song all further enhance the sweetly inane charm of this immensely enjoyable hoot.

I guess that when Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette got married it wasn't spelled out that there would be no secrets because Dean Jones kept a really big one from his teen years. For what that was and how it turned out one should see the prequel to The Shaggy DA, the famous Walt Disney classic, The Shaggy Dog.

To refresh one's memory back then the Dean Jones character of Wilby Daniels was played by Tommy Kirk who because of a cursed ring said to belong to Lucretia Borgia back in the day who allegedly dabbled in the black arts, Kirk would enter the body of a large sheep dog who was owned by the new next door neighbors of his family. When the ring got returned and Kirk performed a heroic act, the curse was lifted.

Or so they thought, now Wilby Daniels is played by Dean Jones who now is a lawyer, running for District Attorney against corrupt DA Keenan Wynn and married to Suzanne Pleshette with a son, Shane Sinutko. Just as the campaign gets going the ring is once again stolen from the museum and when the magic words inscribed on the ring are uttered, Jones is shifting from human to canine and back.

Eventually chief villain Keenan Wynn gets the ring and he's in control of the situation when he discovers what it does to Jones. It becomes a family project to get that ring back and expose him before the electorate. Also along for the ride is Tim Conway, an ice cream truck vendor whose shaggy dog's body Jones transfers to.

The Shaggy DA has a lot of laughs in it and its good entertainment, it doesn't however have the poignancy of the teen angst that Tommy Kirk brought to the original Wilby. It does have the usual cast of Hollywood veterans that the Disney studio always managed to find work for. It's one of the reasons the Magic Kingdom films from the late Sixties and Seventies are a lot of fun, it's like watching some of the classic films from the studio system days, seeing all those familiar faces.

I'd still recommend the film, especially to family audiences with younger viewers, but it's not as good as the original.