I think if you’re into comics like many of us here or have children, you know of Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel phenomenon Dog Man. A spin-off of his earlier hit series, Captain Underpants, Dog Man follows the titular character as he saves his city from a multitude of dangers. It’s told in a way that speaks directly to young elementary school-age children with an amazing amount of silliness and perfect kid logic to problems. DreamWorks Pictures has finally made a feature film adapting the character from some of his earliest adventures. Peter Hastings, the screenwriter and director, takes the time to merge a few of the books together as we start with Officer Knight and his partner police dog, Greg, getting into a terrible accident after trying to catch the most evilest cat in the world, Petey. Only a hair-brained surgery can save any part of either of them, and with that Dog Man is born! With the head of Greg the Dog and Officer’s Knight’s body, we have the most heroic and kung fu fighting Police hero in the world. Plus, he still likes to play catch.
Dog Man’s (voiced by Peter Hastings himself) primary mission is catching and re-catching Petey the Cat, voiced by Pete Davidson, who is smart enough to escape just as fast as Dog Man can put him back into cat jail. After Dog Man is forced to stop catching Petey because of weird logic by the mayor (Cheri Oteri) forcing The Chief (Lil Rel Howery) to do so, Petey and Dog Man’s life is turned upside down after Lil’ Petey (Lucas Hopkins) enters the picture. L’il Petey’s sweetness and light will change both of their lives.
Meanwhile, the growing threat of the once-dead Flippy, the telekinetic fish (Ricky Gervais), looms over the city with his dangerous return. I had the pleasure of seeing this film in a theater filled with families with young kids excited throughout the film’s entire runtime. While for me it was familiar, all this was new for them, and it must’ve been like many of us felt when we finally saw a movie of our favorite comic or cartoon characters on the big screen. The look of the film using computer animation to make it look like stop motion was a wise choice; it feels like fun clay stop motion films like Wallace and Gromit, and it makes the world feel tactile – like these are things you could play with and have your own adventures.
Using onomatopoeias and so much comic book language on screen adds nice visual pops and keeps anyone interested in what’s going on. While I had to look up some of the books on wikis to learn more about Dog Man, seeing how they folded the stories of different books together while keeping its tone and sense of fun, making a story that is actually interesting for an adult to follow is a fantastic feat. A lot of that is done with Petey, and his connection to Lil Petey gives a lot of depth to the “villain” of the story, if Dog Man really has villains. Dog Man is a pretty stagnant character – he’s just good. While he has an arc mostly about how his life changed since becoming Dog Man and his loneliness, his life improves with the arrival of Lil Petey. Most of the story pivots once Lil Petey enters the story, and they use it to take a movie that can work for an audience of all ages. Also, Lil Petey has one of the best Talk No Jutsus outside Naruto Uzumaki. Dog Man is going to be a solid hit and one of the best movies purely made for children I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not about adults at all. This is for the Dog Man lovers, and it hits it out of the park.
[For more on Dog Man, here’s a look at some of the back story.]
