Sal and I saw this when it first came out back in 1980, just after we were married. I knew it had something to do with a dog, but that’s about all I remembered. So when I saw it at the Barrington Library, I checked it out, for old time’s sake.

It was lame. Chevy Chase plays Browning, an American private detective in London. He gets called to the office for a case. On the way he runs into (literally) Jackie, a reporter who wants to write books. At the office, Browning gets hired by Bart to protect a woman whose life has been threatened. When he gets to her apartment, he finds her dead. A hidden assailant sneaks up behind him and stabs him.

The next thing Browning knows, he’s in heaven. A man behind a desk tells him he has 24 hours to go back and find his murderer. The catch is that the only available body for him to go back in belongs to a dog, and the dog is in Paris. No problem, because right where he shows up in Paris he finds Jackie, and she’s on her way back to London. Browning jumps in her car and she adopts him.

Back in London, he starts to investigate. This is made much easier when it turns out that Jackie is writing a book about the joint murder of the woman and a P.I. (Browning). To make a boring story short, the woman was having an affair with a prominent politician. Bart was the politician’s henchman. He killed the woman to keep the affair from ruining the politician’s chances to be prime minister. Browning solves the case, but when Bart takes a shot at him (as a dog) Jackie throws herself in front of him and is killed.

Browning decides to stay on earth as a dog to be with Jackie. But now she’s dead. No she’s not. She has decided to come back as a cat to be with him. See, I told you it was lame. I gave it a 5. It had very little going for it. It had a cute dog, but it wasn’t for kids because it had adult themes and some foul language and violence. It wasn’t for adults because the main character was a cute dog. Chevy Chase had very little on-screen time and not even many voice-overs as the dog.