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DreamWorks’ latest animated film features a police officer who is blown up and must have his dog’s head sewn onto his body. This Robocop for Paw-Patrol fans features some of the most exhausting editing and pacing of any movie in recent memory. In spite of its pacing, there are, surprisingly, some rather tender moments and themes at play throughout the kung-fu-dog-cop movie.
Before diving into anything else, it is imperative to discuss this movie’s editing and pacing. The film does not stop for anything. This is an issue, especially as it juggles nearly ten different relationships or plot lines in its ninety-minute runtime. There is no room to breathe. In truth, if even one of these ten relationships were fully explored, this may well have been one of the year’s best animated films. Alas, they are not. Instead, we are introduced to characters like Petey The Cat (Pete Davidson) who, mustache-twirly (or whisker-twirly in this case) as he is, provides an astonishingly deep look at generational trauma and understanding the responsibility required to raise a child. Yes, you read that right. Dog Man is at its most effective when examining ideas of generational trauma… and co-parenting. Here, I must reiterate that this plot line is not introduced until well into the film’s second half.
The first half of Dog Man plays like a silly Robocop spoof for children. It is ridiculous and zany and excels at setting up the tone, breakneck pacing, and cartoon logic, which will be utilized throughout the rest of the movie. To be clear, the animation is absolutely charming. Taking cues from the hand-drawn graphic novel from which Dog Man originates, the film features a physical onomatopoeia not unlike the “cracks,” “pows,” and howls that one might expect to see from the source material. Here, too, it is worth mentioning that Dog Man’sanimation really is a huge draw for the film. Ever since Into The Spider-verse, popular animated films have become increasingly more comfortable breaking from the Pixar animated style we have grown so accustomed to seeing on the big screen. With that, many animated films have taken cues specifically from Spiderman, and while refreshingly “not Pixar,” “more Spiderman” is maybe not the lesson animators should have learned from the web-slinger’s success.
Dog Man does not feel like “more spiderman.” Its animation, while certainly comic book-inspired, is specifically inspired by the childlike drawings of the Dog Man graphic novel. Taking cues from the panels and pages of the source material and rendering them into a 3-D animation at once maintains the simplicity and levity of the characters while elevating them to a more dynamic and engrossing format.
I digress. Let’s get back to the generational trauma elephant in the room. Dog Man excels at inserting darkness into its silly, kid-friendly police romp. In order to break down what I mean by “darkness,” we’ve got to examine a few of the central characters and plots of the movie. Let’s start with Dog Man himself. At the beginning of the film, the titular Supa Cop is two separate beings: Officer Knight and Greg, Knight’s police dog. Petey The Cat wastes no time as he blows our heroes up in the movie’s opening. From the ashes, Dog Man is born. To be clear, Dog Man is more dog than man, as he spends most of the film barking, howling, chasing balls, and licking faces. It is highly unlikely that your children will be traumatized by the upsetting premise that is Dog Man’s origin story. For this very reason, the film spends little time on it. What little bit we do explore of Dog Man’s personal life is that immediately after the accident, his girlfriend moved out of their house and found a new boyfriend. More on this in a moment.
The second lead of the film, Petey the Cat, is a nefarious feline inventor and Dog Man’s archrival. He is also a bad father. After cloning himself and creating Lil Petey (Lucas Calderon), Petey wastes no time dumping Lil Petey on the side of the road, rather than assuming the responsibility of fatherhood. As it happens, Petey was also abandoned by his father as a child. This idea, Dog Man’s dumping, and the Chief of Police’s jealousy of Dog Man all underscore the movie’s central and surprising nihilistic motif: “Life isn’t fair.”
This is a rather crude oversimplification of the plot points and ideas being presented in this ninety-minute flick. I fear I did not mention Petey’s father re-entering Petey’s life, only to steal his belongings and abandon him again; the zany reporting team that follows Dog Man’s every move; Petey’s stints in jail; or, of course, the antagonist of the film which most children will likely latch onto: Flippy the psionic fish (Ricky Gervais), who brings buildings to life to rampage through the city. It is all of these auxiliary plots that crowd an otherwise heartfelt movie about the plights of parenthood. Make no mistake, the silly reporting team and goofy, sentient buildings will be what your children remember the most about this exceedingly whacky story. Unfortunately, these very same unnecessary elements come at the cost of creating a movie with an exceptionally potent message about fatherhood and parental responsibility.
Verdict:
Dog Man is a great deal of fun. It is beautifully animated but never given the time to breathe or explore its characters or themes due to the high concentration of characters and relationships teeming throughout the film. Even so, when it does allow itself the time to truly emote, the movie creates an undeniable narrative about parenting, responsibility, and coming to terms with some of life’s most unfair moments.
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