I keep seeing pictures from ...
Question: I keep seeing pictures from the movie Doogal and something is bothering me — I know I've seen the characters before. Was it a TV show or a previous movie or something in the 1980s? It's driving me nuts!
Answer: Doogal (2005) is an English movie based on a French-made children's TV show that started airing in the U.K. (dubbed into English, it probably goes without saying) in the mid-1960s as The Magic Roundabout. I can only assume that the Weinstein Group, which distributed Doogal in the U.S., figured there were two good arguments for changing the name. First, the target audience was young American kids and their parents, who would never have seen the original show. And second, "roundabout" isn't an American term — it's what we call a merry-go-round. The Weinstein Group also redid the voice track, changing the dialogue to reflect U.S. rather than U.K. pop culture and replacing most of the original voice cast, which included Jim Broadbent, Joanna Lumley, Ray Winstone and Robbie Williams. What I find really odd is that on top of everything else, they changed the spelling of Doogal, the dog's name; it was originally Dougal.