Hollywood's Most Abominable Live-Action Talking Animals

We all know Hollywood is largely comprised of money-grubbing pimps and hos, looking to spread the creative equivalent of VD to the moviegoing community like they had a stake in a pharmaceutical company.

These crass execs peddle not in flesh but in green, and exploit human weakness, and perhaps no human failing is quite so egregious as their prediliction for watching movies featuring things that have no earthly business speaking, most commonly animals. In the age of CGI, verbose wildlife is not limited to animated films, but can be brought into, in some sense, "the real world" through live-action films. This is arguably Hollywood's most crass and cruel form of tortu-tainment and a borderline crime against humanity.

Here then, are some of the worst instances of Hollywood's fascination with talking animals (with perhaps the stray baby or inanimate object or two).

Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007, 2009)

By the time he hit the screens as Chipmunk patriarch Dave Seville in this live-action version of the classic cartoon series, Jason Lee had already done his share of making crummy live-action versions of great cartoon series (see "Underdog"). The first "Chipmunks" movie was bad (and comedian David Cross took a lot of ribbing for selling out as the villain), but even Lee knew to just fulfill his contractual obligation for the sequel (er, "Squeakuel"), appearing in just a few scenes then bowing out while the Chipmunks while the 'munks wooed human teenage girls (who apparently literally had Jungle Fever) and again pillaged my childhood, all in the name of a few bucks.

Garfield (2004, 2006)

In "Zombieland," as Bill Murray sat dying from a gunshot wound to the chest, he was asked if he had any regrets. He uttered two words: "Garfield, maybe." That should be enough for us all.

Dr. Doolittle (1998, 2001)

Especially egregious in that it features a multitude of obnoxious talking animals, and perhaps more importantly marked the official kicking of Eddie Murphy's career off a cliff and into the craggy fiery depths of Kiddie Movie Hell. That he returned for the sequel is inexcusable.

Hot to Trot (1988)

Bobcat Goldthwait's popularity peaked in 1987 with "Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol," but no one told Warner Bros. that, as they combined 'ol Bob's whiny-voiced schtick (that at the time most people believed was really how he spoke due to some "disease" he had) with equal parts "Mr. Ed" and... "Wall Street"? There's just no excuse for that.

G-Force (2009)

Secret-agent guinea pigs? Sounds silly, but if done right it has a lot of potential for satire of spy movies. But what we got instead was a group of inane guinea pigs who, when they did speak, spout off about nothing in particular (and often just mumble random catch phrases from the 2001 pop culture lexicon). "G-Force" features a plot cobbled around the lame gimmick and increasingly dumb sight gags, with no laughs, no sense, and no point to be had.