For the last few months all I have been talking about is FLOW, the little cat movie from Latvia that could. While I will still promote that movie to anyone who will listen, the big reason is that the animated feature is one of the most powerful art forms we have in cinema right now and is now far from a medium that is JUST for kids. I have been very passionate about promoting animated movies to adults.
We are still early into 2025 and DOG MAN, which totally took over my funny bone, jumps right out of the gate with such an exuberant, eager-to-please attitude that you can’t help but fall in love with it right from its brilliant title card sequence that dares you to not laugh at it and will very likely be one of the very best animated films that you will see of the year. And it would also make a great double bill with FLOW too, if that’s up your alley.
Several years ago I remember seeing creator Dave Pilkey’s previous work CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE MOVIE and also loving the visual design along with its really funny two leads. Here, he and filmmaker Peter Hastings have outdone themselves here with such a funny concept that calls back to older movies in the way that the Zucker brothers did with POLICE SQUAD and THE NAKED GUN movies, pushing the satire to such a degree that at many points at the screening I was laughing louder than the kids at the same screening. Add to that, the movie is a visual delight of eye-popping colours with something to look at in every frame, but more on that later.
Very simple premise here, in that Officer Knight and his canine buddy Greg are doing all the hard work fighting crime until a bomb going off puts them both in the hospital. The nurses figure out that the only way they can both me saved is to combine the two to make a new individual. (Even the characters themselves pause at the silliness of this idea) As a result, Dog Man leaps into frame and somehow, it just instantly works. Dog Man’s first assignment is to take down the Petey The Cat (wonderfully voiced by Pete Davinson), an evil cat wanting to do ALL of the crime… but thankfully there’s a lot more to this.
Petey The Cat is focused on even cloning himself to do more crime to pit himself against Dog Man. And it’s around this part in the movie where I fell in love, in the accidental creation of a clone of Petey that doesn’t exactly work for him and instead becomes the soul of the movie in a form of a child version. The voice work by Lucas Hopkins Calderon as ‘Lil Petey is key here….it is JUST childlike enough but with a huge comedic undercurrent and is very much in on the joke. The constant repeating of “Why?” when questions are answered by his elders I thought would be a tired joke, but it gets new life here. As the movie progresses, the movie also takes fun and original turns with its material, has strong character moments and even a few surprises towards the end that I dare not reveal here.
I feel like I need to see the movie a second time just to pick up on the references, and as a writer who takes notes during movies I had references from APOCALPYSE NOW, DIE HARD and blink-and-miss-it gags, like a “Life is unfair” call line. Buildings come to life and fight each other. One of them even mixes music. And there is a machine with a title that also matches a mental health issue, and yet I giggled every time they said it as this hit aspect of my funny bone. This movie gets away with more than you think.
What’s astonishing is how the animation work here at first feels simple and even hand-drawn…until it isn’t. The vibrant colours pop off the screen in every scene, with nearly every shot expressing stunning watercolours of green and blue. If you were ever the kid who liked to draw outside of the lines, this movie is for you. I would recommend the movie on the stunning mix of animation alone, but thankfully there’s a lot more to all of this.
I mentioned the voice work of Lil Petey earlier but we also have the added bonus of the likes of Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher and Ricky Gervais all bringing their great voice talent, but never overdoing it. In fact, I didn’t know it was any of them until the credits rolled. I have never really wanted to see an animated feature JUST for the voice talents and the filmmakers here have carefully cast the right and best people possible.
Seeing a movie like this, even as a middle-aged man who MIGHT not be the target audience, is absolutely refreshing. I am really hoping this is becomes a huge hit and more movies come out of it, as this brought me back to my childhood and shows that animation shows the essence of reality and it’s very exciting to have something like DOG MAN come along that you can tell its creators and animation team had a total blast making it.
DOG MAN is now playing in theatres. Kids and families will love it, but animation fans will absolutely fall in love with it.