For anyone unfamiliar with the world of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants, watching Peter Hastings’ adaptation of the franchise’s offshoot with Dog Man may be the most discombobulating out-of-body experience you’ll ever have in the cinema all year. Kids will undoubtedly love the movie’s vibrant, colorful, expressive animation. Yet, most of the jokes in this 89-minute-long affair—with a Bad Guys short playing beforehand, slightly extending the feature runtime—will go over their head. Even better, they may never grasp any of them until they’re much older, only focusing on the physical aspect of it all rather than all of the intelligent verbal comedy that people with a firm grasp on pop culture will get.
That seems like a considerable risk for DreamWorks Animation, a studio that’s usually much safer in the comedy department than Pixar—and with reason. Ever since they joked about O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco chase in Shrek 2 and made an entire film chock-filled with some of the most offensive jokes of any children’s picture in Bee Movie, they have been playing the crowd-pleasing route to compel their smallest viewers and not offend the adults in the room so they aren’t shocked at what they’re hearing. Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t treat mature themes, such as in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Wild Robot. However, they now do it with a sensitivity perfectly attuned to both children and adult sensibilities. Both demographics will perceive what’s on screen differently yet will come to the same conclusion as the movie ends. Hopefully, that will aid them in understanding this world we live in a bit more.
Because of this, a movie like Dog Man feels special. It brings DreamWorks Animation back to an era they wrote off long ago and now proudly wear as part of their identity, and one of the primary reasons why their earlier films are so compelling to watch, whether they’re ‘objectively’ good or bad. The conceit of Dog Man also seems slightly offbeat for a movie targeted primarily for children because it focuses on the mutation between a human police officer and his dog to save his body’s life. Hence the name Dog Man. He’s part dog. Part man. None of it makes sense, and it could put off viewers who wanted a more carefree time at the movies. However, if you’re on board with Hastings’ proposition from as soon as Dog Man begins, not having fun seems impossible.
Dog Man Finds Pleasure In Its Adult Humor
Most child viewers will focus more on the relationship Dog Man (also voiced by Hastings) builds with Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins), a cloned version of the titular character’s arch-nemesis: Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson). The orange feline is hellbent on capturing Dog Man, who, in turn, wants to foil Petey’s plans and put him behind bars. It seems like a reasonable dog vs. cat situation, though depicted here on a much larger scale than the usual Tom & Jerry (or Itchy & Scratchy) antics. At first, Petey creates a clone of himself to deceive Dog Man, but he is unaware that this version is born as a baby and needs to learn how to operate in the world. The clone will achieve Petey’s stature…18 years from now. Oops. However, as a result, he abandons him, which prompts Li’l Petey to have suicidal ideations about his future as a cat, and he attempts to end his life. Before doing so, however, Dog Man saves him and adopts the little cat as his own, to the dismay of Petey, who has grown to like him after reading a picture book that his clone wrote.
Yes, as much as this is marketed as a children’s film, Dog Man continuously teeters the line between what should be considered “kid-friendly” through its eye-popping sense of style that deftly captures Pilkey’s drawings and humor that’s far darker—and more adult—than it should be. This is but one example out of many, and it’s part of the joy of seeing a movie that’s far smarter than the trailers will have you believe. It deftly understands that, yes, kids are the primary target audience, but their parents also need to bring them along. They’ll have to watch the movie and find some enjoyment in it, too. Otherwise, it may feel like a miserable waste of time.
It’s a tad unfortunate that the plot is all over the place and focuses on so many things at once. The relationship between Dog Man and Li’l Petey should theoretically be the primary narrative arc of the animated movie’s 89 minutes. Yet, it also depicts the grown-up Petey enacting an evil plan that will resurrect Flippy the Fish (Ricky Gervais) to life and hunt down Dog Man, the arrival of Petey’s father (Stephen Root), which upends the family relationship, a news reporter (Isla Fisher) falling in love with the police station’s chief (Lil Rel Howery).
Most of it is underdeveloped, and in juggling from one storyline to the next, Hastings and editor Brian Hopkins have difficulty prioritizing what’s most important, especially with a rather breezy runtime attached to the movie. However, its mile-a-minute sense of pace and frenetic energy ensures we’re always captivated to watch what will unfold next since we never truly know what will happen from scene to scene. Each joke acts more like a deep-cut reference for adult viewers to look at each other in total synchronicity. At the same time, the kids are perplexed at what their parents are laughing at since they’re not “in” on what’s being showcased, either visually or verbally.
Dog Man has something for everyone
In most mainstream animated offerings, when a joke primarily destined for adults is spoken, the character must explain it to a younger audience. Think of the scene in The Garfield Movie where the titular character pauses the film to note that he does his stunts, referencing Tom Cruise’s God-like skills within Hollywood in recent films like Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning. Yet, right after, he says, “Me and Tom Cruise,” as if the writer needs to talk down at the most astute audience members who understood what the protagonist was saying from the get-go.
In Dog Man, most of the jokes are left unexplained. You either got it, or you didn’t. A Die Hard reference in a kids’ film is only funny if you know how they riffed John McClane’s most famous line (they make it child-friendly, don’t worry). A robot named after a disorder may sound offensive until you realize how he’s “renamed.” And for the more visual crowd, there’s a gigantic character performing a Suplex to topple an antagonist. A Suplex. In a kids’ film. They knew what they were doing, and I love them so much for it. Of course, I also won’t say that I grasped every joke. Many of them absolutely went over my head, but that’s the beauty of entering the absurd world of Captain Underpants: there’s something for everyone that will touch any age.
It also helps that the star-studded voice cast assembled here does terrific work by infusing as much life and energy as possible into their respective characters and perfectly complementing the zany, almost improvisational visual style on display. Because of this, Dog Man is easily one of the smartest animated films from a major motion picture studio you’ll see in a long time, and one that will hopefully capture the attention of both young and old viewers, who will get something very different out of the film, but hopefully resonate with the positive and uplifting message it gives to the audience as it wraps.
Sure, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel or drastically break enough formal conventions to be on the same level as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Wild Robot. But it’s far better than it has any right to be, and that’s in part due to how it never talks down at any of its audience members and knows who will grasp the film’s funniest jokes and who will be enthralled by its visuals the most. And if you like the best of both worlds, you’ll be pleasantly satisfied.
Dog Man releases exclusively in cinemas on January 31.