Stars of successful sitcoms are generally given one, and only one, opportunity to establish themselves as movie stars. And since Kelsey Grammer's one shot at celluloid fame, Down Periscope, didn't exactly set the world on fire, it seems likely that he will forever be relegated to the less-than-exciting world of direct-to-video films. It is perhaps fitting, then, that the video box for The Real Howard Spitz features a despondent-looking Grammer dressed in a cow suit looking forlornly into the camera while a cheerful moppet gazes up at him. Grammer stars in Howard Spitz as a down-on-his-luck, misanthropic detective novelist who writes a string of successful children's books and ends up befriending aforementioned moppet Genevieve Tessier and her pretty mother (Amanda Donohoe). Of course, in every children's film, there has to be a parent who's either dead or lost, which explains Spitz's secondary plot involving Grammer's attempts to locate Tessier's long-lost father, a married cad who wants nothing to do with the precocious tyke. As a rule, direct-to-video children's films tend to be only as good as they need to be, which is somewhere slightly above competent. Howard Spitz, however, is surprisingly sharp for a low-rent kids' film. Grammer essentially plays a detective-movie archetype plunked down in the middle of a children's film, and the juxtaposition is at times quite amusing. Grammer gives a pleasantly acidic performance as the film's child-hating protagonist, and Donohoe is good, if underutilized, as his love interest. Tessier, however, suffers from a terminal case of the cutes. That distraction aside, fans of Grammer's vinegary television persona should find much to like about The Real Howard Spitz.