Dog Man
Based on the children's books of the same name (spun off from Captain Underpants), Dog Man is exactly what you would expect from the premise of a police officer and his dog merged together after an explosion when the dog's head is sewn on the cop's body (but keeps his paws for some reason?) leading to the mediocre cop becoming a "supa cop" beloved by the entire city, except apparently the Mayor (Cheri Oteri).
Dog Man is basically a series of crazy bits and moments. We get Lil Rel Howery as the gruff Chief who is proud of Dog Man but constantly frustrated by how much of a dog he is (including being distracted by squirrels, chasing anything thrown, or licking him happily). There are plenty of times for the movie to play on the doggy aspect of the character (including having a cat nemesis). I'll say this for Dog Man, even if the movie ebbs and flows a bit over 89 minutes, its premise is just wacky enough to keep adult interest (for the most part) while also seeming to hit the right notes with it's much younger target demographic.
The main aspect to the tale involves Dog Man struggling to find connection after Officer Knight and Greg are merged to discover, while now much better at their job, they don't really fit in anywhere as they are abandoned by their previous family and are now forced to walk a new path. On the beat, Dog Man is unstoppable tracking down public enemy #1 Petey (Pete Davidson) and foiling all of his evil schemes, over and over again as the cat continually breaks out of cat prison. However, there's not much for Dog Man outside of work at least until one of Petey's failed experiments (Lucas Hopkins Calderon) lands on his doorstep.
The young kids who the early-reader books' target, at least those in the screening I attended, seemed to enjoy the film which kept their interest throughout and the animation fits that pre-school to early elementary school demographic. The wacky, but mostly-harmless, tale of a doggy cop also has a big heart with a message kids can enjoy and parents can easy sign-off on as its off-the-wall premise does quite a bit to keep momentum moving even when the story bogs down from time to time stretching its premise into a feature-length run-time.
Watch the trailer- Title: Dog Man
- IMDb: link
