(If you’re looking for Luc Besson’s 2024 film Dogman, click here.)
Dav Pilkey’s two stream-of-consciousness, ADHD-fueled book series Captain Underpants and Dog Man seem to follow the rules of great improv comedy; the word “no” doesn’t exist in these universes (except when some authoritarian figure says it), and anything that can happen will happen. Want a toilet to become sentient? Done. How about a man and his dog being injured, and the only way to save them both is to transplant the dog’s head onto the man’s body? This is how you get Dog Man, the second filmed adaptation of Pilkey’s novels.
Spun off as a creation of Captain Underpants’ main characters, Dog Man chronicles the adventures of the titular canine/human hybrid, sewn together as a result of an accident and emerging as a shining example of the empathetic right side of the law. In his second animated feature, writer/director Peter Hastings – who also voices Dog Man – endears us to his versions of Pilkey’s characters with cute voice performances and engaging animation while throwing a lot at us visually and thematically. Truth be told, it’s a sweet, entertaining movie, but some may find themselves fatigued by the multiple plot threads and relentless “throw it at the screen and see if it sticks” ethos engendered by the books and brought to vivid life by Hastings.
It starts with the aforementioned accident that results in Dog Man being created and sent out into the world to fight crime. He’s not a superhero, although some of his actions are definitely in the superhero vein; he’s just a cop with a dog’s head trying to do the right thing. No matter how much his Chief (Lil Rel Howery) yells at him (even though you can tell he doesn’t really mean it) or gets weird news coverage from Chief’s sort-of love interest, Sarah (Isla Fisher), Dog Man’s just a dude doing a job and hoping to go home afterward. At the top of his to-do list: Catch “the world’s most evilest cat,” Petey (Pete Davidson), slippery archvillain and longtime nemesis.
The film delights in Petey putting Dog Man through his paces and forcing him to keep up; their antics drive 90% of the action, further aided by the inclusion of Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins), a genuinely open-hearted and kind clone Petey created to help with his heists. Yeah, you almost already know how this is going to go, especially when the closed-off Petey sees that Li’l Petey is his polar personality opposite, full of the care and love he never received as a child from his ne’er-do-well father, Grampa (Stephen Root). Over time, all of the characters realize that family isn’t just blood; it’s the people who have your back in both good times and bad.
Dog Man is full of childlike imagination and whimsy; it’s a big-screen adaptation of the stories you wrote with your friends in primary school where the hero defeats the bad guy and then goes home to confront, say, something as simple as a leaky faucet. And it just keeps going from there – the faucet turns into a machine, the machine turns into a robot, the robot wants to take over the world but really likes pizza – you know, that kind of thing. There’s a ton of joy and frivolity that Dog Man wants to share with us, and it does so unapologetically and without hesitation.
As parents, we bring our children to these films expecting the usual excitement, good morals, and perhaps a fart joke here or there. Hastings knows this and has dropped in a fair amount of jokes and references for the parents, including two sanitized-for-children’s-ears action movie quotes. In my preview screening, parents (especially the dads) were howling at these, while most of the kids didn’t have a clue why their moms and dads were suddenly barking with laughter. (My daughter got almost all the references, and I wonder if that’s a statement on how I’m raising her or if she’s just well-informed.)
There’s a little something for everyone here, but most importantly, Peter Hastings inserts a certain realism – in a movie where a human body’s walking around with a dog’s head, no less – to hammer home that not everything’s going to work out. I appreciated that a certain plot point was closed unsatisfactorily to keep it from being a fully happy ending. People can only change for the better if they want to, and while Dog Man provides plenty of examples of those wanting to, there’s always the danger that people will disappoint you. Dog Man shoots for the moon and sticks the landing, careening through each precarious, hilarious situation with altruism and mirth. It might be loud, a smidge obnoxious (not offensively so), or way too “what was that?!”, but the fun is in hanging on for the ride and enjoying something that doesn’t mind being weird and proud of it.
