Dog Man, 2025.
Written and Directed by Peter Hastings.
Featuring the voice talents of Peter Hastings, Pete Davidson, Lucas Hopkins Calderon, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Stephen Root, Poppy Liu, Ricky Gervais, Billy Boyd, Luenell, Laraine Newman, Melissa Villaseñor, Cheri Oteri, Kate Micucci, Maggie Wheeler, Pearce Bunting, Max Koch, and Rahnuma Panthaky.
SYNOPSIS:
Dog Man, half dog and half man, he is sworn to protect and serve as he doggedly pursues the feline supervillain Petey the Cat.
Adapted from a series of children’s graphic novels by Dav Pilkey, director Peter Hastings’ Dog Man shows how limiting and restrictive such a character concept is when translated to animation. One could also turn and point at the writer/director and question if he is the one lacking in imagination to make what essentially comes down to a kid-friendly RoboCop as interesting and fun as it sounds on paper.
After all, this is a film where a human police officer’s head is fatally injured on the job while chasing a scheming, villainous orange and black-striped talking cat named Petey (voiced by Pete Davidson), prompting a mad scientist nurse to suggest sewing his trusty canine companion’s head onto the still functioning human body. That may sound traumatic for younger viewers, but it’s light, playful, amusing, and a plot point pushed through so fast that kids will presumably roll with it.
There also lies a significant problem with Dog Man, in that it’s content to keep blazing through ideas and characters to a degree where not only are none of them fleshed out, but Dog Man (with his barks apparently done by Peter Hastings, amusingly vocally pitched and visually tweaked to get his tone and point across) starts to take a backseat in his movie. There are brief gestures at trying to characterize him among the zany back-and-forth with his feline arch nemesis, such as memories of being a pet to his owner and his partner (who promptly moved out of the house and into a relationship with someone else seemingly before the rest of the human body was even buried) or the juxtaposition between workforce happiness (he is often celebrated and gets much more accomplished since the intelligent dog brain has been combined with the physical attributes of a human body, eliminating the weaknesses of one another) and returning to an empty home and sadness.
One understands that, at the end of the day, this is a kid’s movie, so it’s best not to wallow in existential drama, but the filmmakers often don’t know what to do with Dog Man from there. The filmmakers don’t even bother to fill out this fictional city with a bustling society or anything that would demonstrate the hero’s impact; even the police station feels like a ghost town. Why not have Dog Man stop a few petty crimes and help out some civilians to establish his newfound abilities and disadvantages before diving into a montage against a supervillain cat?
After repeatedly being arrested and escaping jail, Petey is given central focus, purchasing a cloning machine, believing that if there are two of him, he can outmatch his rival. Instead, that clone turns out to be a child that has to mature first (voiced by Lucas Hopkins Calderon), much to Petey’s annoyance, until gradually softening up. More hijinks ensue, and the film gets at what sent Petey on a path of crime while touching on how world bitterness often gets passed down from parents. Yes, there is also some family drama here involving Petey’s father.
Meanwhile, a dead psycho-kinetic evil fish is waiting to be brought back to life, the police chief (voiced by the reliably spirited Lil Rel Howery) spends every waking moment shouting about something while trying to make sure the mayor is appeased and hiding his not so secret love for a reporter, and Dog Man develops a friendship with Lil Petey oblivious to the obvious family ties. Not only is this too much crammed into an origin story, but Dog Man also builds to a graphic novel-style action-packed third act that drags on with so many betrayals and newly formed allegiances that it becomes a not-so-self-aware joke while somehow making an 89-minute running time feel much longer.
It’s almost fitting that Dog Man also features a robot named 8DHD; this film is ADHD-crazy, and despite the appropriately scratchy and frame-skipping, pleasantly rendered comic-book-style animation, there is nothing to hold anyone’s attention regardless of age. Disengaged by almost everything happening, including the chaotic finale, I spent more time wondering how a human body digests all the dog food consumed. That’s just one of many, many questions I have that I would like to stop thinking about.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
