Agent Toby Barks Parent Guide

Toby is an average suburban dog, except he’s also a highly trained secret agent with gadgets that allow him to talk, hack computers, and fight bad guys. When one of his fellow agents is kidnapped, Toby will have to reveal his secret to his teen owners and work together to save her.

Please indulge me as I wax philosophical for a moment. When did we as a society fall so far from the light that Jon Lovitz was forced to take a gig like this? How could we have forsaken such a great comedian to the point that he feels the need to take a job voicing a dog in a B movie? On behalf of all of humanity, I am sorry Jon Lovitz. May we all be reminded of your brilliance and may your agent find better projects in future.

Here’s the thing about Agent Toby Barks: it’s not great. The acting and writing are terrible, the plot makes no sense, and they do that weird thing where the dog’s mouth moves only a little bit when it talks like a bad puppet. If this movie were streaming for free somewhere, I’d be a little more lenient. But as of the day of writing, you can only watch it by renting it; it is not streaming anywhere that I can find. I’m not here to tell you how to spend your money, but I think it’s far better value it to spend a similar amount to get a month of Disney+. I’m all for throwing on something G rated to keep the little ones quiet for a few minutes, but there are so many better options for less money.

I could forgive this lackluster production if the messages and themes were strong, but they’re not. The villain’s motivation is that he wants to sell the device that Toby uses to talk to humans so that kids all over the world can grow closer to their pets. Other characters tell him that that’s bad because he’d make money off of it, but that’s a pretty weak argument. If the protagonists were trying to share it for free it would make sense, but instead they just want to keep it for themselves, which seems pretty selfish. I think they were going for an anti-consumerism message, but it doesn’t translate very well.

Agent Toby Barks is too terrible to hold the attention of older children, teens, and adults, but also too scary for most young children to watch alone. My three-year-old got scared during some of the action scenes, but also got bored about halfway through and wandered off. Your better bet for a few moments of sanity is to just put on Frozen 2 for the 5,386^th time like the rest of us.