DOG MAN - Mark Reviews Movies

Dog Man, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 30, 2025

Based on Dav Pilkey's graphic novel series for kids, the opening scenes of Dog Man promise some inspired silliness. The basic setup, for those who might not be aware of the minor cultural phenomenon of this and other work by Pilkey, involves a cop and his trusty canine partner. After failing to defuse a bomb set by a local supervillain (who's a cat, obviously), the officer and his dog are injured in a very particular way. The human's head and the dog's body are rendered essentially useless, so naturally, there's only one solution: Put the dog's head on the man's body.

The result is Dog Man, the best crime-fighter the metropolis of Ohkay City has ever seen. For what it's worth, the first act or so of writer/director Peter Hasting's big-screen adaptation of the books is pretty funny, as the gags, which are often random and definitely don't care too much about giving us any kind of solid plot, keep coming. Dog Man becomes a sensation around the city, stopping criminals and pitching a no-hitter at a charity baseball game and otherwise being an all-around good boy.

The story is less about something big and more about its little details, such as Dog Man returning home to discover that the cop's girlfriend has left, the city's police chief—known only as Chief and voiced by Lil Rel Howery—becoming envious of his new star cop, and local TV news reporter Sarah Hatoff (voice of Isla Fisher) always showing up just in time to report on Dog Man's heroics. There's a charm to the premise, the characters, the insistence that nothing is too goofy for this material, and the animation style, which is computer animated but starts and stutters as if it's stop-motion animation.

It all feels piecemeal in a knowing and effective way, as if Hasting's screenplay has taken the best gags Pilkey or the filmmaker could come up with and thrown them together without a care for whether or not it makes sense. We haven't even gotten to that villain, the orange tabby Petey (voice of Pete Davidson), who could handle the crime-fighting duo of a relatively smart dog with limited physical abilities and a strong, agile cop who falls short of his canine partner in the brains department. Once the two fuse into Dog Man (because of one of the cat's schemes), Petey has to up his game, sending threat after threat to defeat the man-dog-hybrid cop in a montage.

The style and tone of Hastings' movie, in other words, fit the material—initially, at least, in terms of the latter. It's a string of wacky antics presented solely as that, with the light-hearted touch and near-chaotic energy of an old-fashioned cartoon. Eventually, though, that easy-going narrative becomes overwhelmed by too many characters, establishing an ensemble that presumably is necessary for any future installments, and plotting that even the movie itself jokingly admits is too much. Just because it's funny that the movie acknowledges that fact doesn't make it any less true.

The most obvious element of that, perhaps, is the story's growing focus on Petey. Sure, the villainous cat is an amusing character, holed up in a "secret" lab announced by multiple signs, and certainly more talkative than our man-dog hero, who only communicates with barks and growls and howls (provided by the director). The feline eventually drives everything here, though, from his plan to resurrect a dead fish that had telekinetic powers to his desire to make an assistant who will be just like him. That has him clone himself, although he's disappointed to learn that the process results in Li'l Petey (voice of Lucas Hopkins Calderon), a kitty version of himself who actually wants to do good.

With the movie's attention and intentions so severely split, the narrative shifts from focused near-chaos to a near-frenzy of ideas, subplots, and action. Lost amidst the messiness is Dog Man himself, who is apparently a single-joke character in Hastings' mind and, with all of those jokes told near the start, is no longer useful for the rest of the story. Instead, it's all about Petey formulating and executing (and screwing up) his master plan, discovering how much he cares for Li'l Petey, and dealing with his own father (voiced by Stephen Root) abandoning him as a kitten.

The material succumbs to three major pitfalls. First, it's too concerned with plot for something as comedically minded as it is. Second, it doesn't know where or, seemingly, how to hold its attention, especially since the script seems to go out of its way to invent new complications. Third and most surprisingly, the whole thing becomes too sappy for its own good, as the relationship between Petey and Li'l Petey is treated so seriously that it deflates the whole comic spirit of the movie.

Dog Man begins with clear intentions: to tell as many jokes as possible within its odd premise. It's the right idea for something this intentionally zany, but gradually, the movie stretches its thin setup even thinner and falls back on formula, until we can no longer recognize the madcap comedy it promised us.

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