Mark and Fran Garrison (Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette) are a young married couple who spend the entire movie at each other's throats. You really wonder why they remain married in the story and I really think this is a major problem with the film....the couple simply hated each other.

The story begins with the couple racing like the devil to get their pet Dachshund to the vet because it's in labor. Never mind that dogs have been giving birth for thousands of years without vets....the dog is apparently quite pampered. After having three puppies, Mark learns that the vet has a bit of a predicament...his Great Dane had too many puppies and one of them wasn't going to survive. Since the Dachshund only had three puppies, Mark agrees to take the Dane and have it nursed by the mama Dachshund.

So far all this makes sense. However, Mark doesn't tell Fran that their fourth puppy is a Great Dane...and it takes her several weeks to notice! This makes no sense...nor did it make any sense that Mark would not talk to his wife about this. In fact, this is THE model for the rest of the movie--with the couple not communicating and each using the dogs against the other. Mark loves the Great Dane and Fran always sides with her Dachshunds and scapegoating the Great Dane....blaming it for the damage generally begin done by her Dachshunds. What's to become of this bickering family? And, will Fran ever come to like and accept the Dane?

My oldest daughter and I loved watching the scenes with the doggies. However, when the story centered on the couple, the film bogged down because down deep they don't seem to love each other--and what fun is it seeing an arguing couple?! More dogs...less bickering couple and you would have had a better movie. Overall, very watchable but a film that manages to just miss the mark...and all of this has to do with the total lack of chemistry between the two leads.

Advertising designer and his wife are at odds over their canine brood: her four Dachshunds to his friendly, clumsy Great Dane. Noisy comedy from Walt Disney buttresses the endless husband-and-wife arguments with four-legged slapstick chaos and sight gags, some of which will no doubt please the impressionable. Slick, empty nonsense with unconvincing marrieds at the center; Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette, sleeping in separate twin beds, lovingly refer to each other as "Dear" and "Darling" without any genuine affection between the them. Everything is cued-up in advance, processed for infantile reaction, and then cleared away without anything to remember the next day. *1/2 from ****

This Disney comedy stars Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette as a happily married couple who have dog issues. Pleshette is the proud owner of a pregnant dachshund who has to make a mad dash to the veterinarian to give birth which costs Jones a bunch of moving violations.

But while at the veterinarian's, Charlie Ruggles after delivering Suzanne's three dachshund pups persuades Jones to take in a Great Dane pup because the mother rejected it from her litter. Jones not too reluctantly agreed as he's always wanted a big man size dog.

Of course when Suzanne finds out she reluctantly agrees, but not for long as the puppy grows up big and bumptious. The bulk of the film is taken up with the big bumptious Great Dane making a wreck of their lives. Poor dog whose named Brutus gets blamed for everything even when it isn't his fault. But he proves himself a winner at the end, literally.

Jones and Pleshette are a nice couple and the chemistry is good. One thing I took exception to is the sequence where the big dog actually trees a police officer. I mean really, we all know that cop Kelly Thordsen in real life would have just shot the dog. There's been enough stories out there about trigger happy cops to know that's the case. But not in the Magic Kingdom.

It's an innocuous Disney comedy that other than that scene holds up well as family entertainment.