Dog Man review – zip­py, beau­ti­ful­ly con­struct­ed fam­i­ly fun

Cap­tain Under­pants: The First Epic Movie is sec­ond only to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish as Dream­Works Animation’s best film of the past decade. Dav Pilkey’s beloved children’s graph­ic nov­el series was adapt­ed about as faith­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, ful­ly cap­tur­ing the puerile (lit­er­al toi­let humour) and sub­ver­sive (cri­tiques against the edu­ca­tion system’s expres­sion­less rigid­i­ty edu­ca­tion sys­tem) spir­it of Pilkey’s work in a con­sis­tent­ly hys­ter­i­cal and dynam­i­cal­ly-ani­mat­ed treat of a film.

Cap­tain Under­pants met chil­dren on their lev­el but nev­er talked down to them, rev­el­ling in absurd silli­ness whilst still speak­ing to their own anx­i­eties, though nev­er so much that the fun risked being spoiled. That ethos trans­fers over to Dog Man, both the book series which began in 2016 – a spin-off pitched as in-uni­verse comics drawn by Under­pants’ fourth-grade pro­tag­o­nists Harold and George – and now the big screen adap­ta­tion helmed by Peter Hastings.

The premise is the def­i­n­i­tion of daft: an evil cat named Petey (Pete David­son giv­ing a career-best per­for­mance) ter­ror­is­ing OK City decides to off his only poten­tial neme­ses, Offi­cer Knight and Greg the Dog (both voiced by Hast­ings), by blow­ing them up…only to acci­den­tal­ly cause man and dog to be fused togeth­er via emer­gency surgery into the nigh-unstop­pable crime-fight­ing super­cop, Dog Man. Fol­low­ing a fanservice‑y mon­tage of Dog Man foil­ing var­i­ous Petey schemes, the plot even­tu­al­ly kicks into gear as the lone­some Petey decides to clone him­self a new (human) assis­tant. How­ev­er, his cloning machine starts all clones from child­hood – so Petey inad­ver­tent­ly offloads the unwant­ed kid (Lucas Hop­kins Calderon) on Dog Man.

Whilst not as out­right sub­ver­sive as Cap­tain Under­pants or some of the Dog Man books, that Pilkey mix­ture of non­sense and sin­cer­i­ty shines through. Hast­ings’ screen­play does an admirable kid-friend­ly job of explor­ing cycles of parental aban­don­ment, the fathers that even­tu­al­ly step up and adop­tive pseu­do-par­ents who want what’s best for the child, with com­e­dy and just enough pathos to earn some sweet heart-swells. Then, right when that dra­ma threat­ens to tip over into sac­cha­rine or slows down the pac­ing too much, Dog Man will chase it with an action sequence where a robot suplex­es a build­ing, or a gag involv­ing a phone com­pa­ny entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to inform­ing callers that ​“life’s not fair.”

Dog Man is plen­ty fun­ny, albeit less fun­ny or idea-stuffed than Cap­tain Under­pants, and drops down a peg for a while once a squawky-voiced Ricky Ger­vais turns up as a tele­ki­net­ic fish. But one area where the cop does have a leg up over the cape is in its phe­nom­e­nal ani­ma­tion. Pro­duc­tion design­er Nate Wragg and art direc­tor Christo­pher Zibach have cre­at­ed one of the most tac­tile ani­mat­ed worlds in recent mem­o­ry, using Pilkey’s child­like illus­tra­tions as a start­ing point rather than a bible.

Their char­ac­ters have the soft round­ed­ness of fuzzy felt, detailed just enough that you want to reach out and run your thumb along their faces, while OK City’s build­ings, cars and var­i­ous con­trap­tions resem­ble bright­ly-coloured play-blocks, rigid yet still worn down from overuse. The deci­sion to ani­mate at a low­er frame rate – akin to The Peanuts Movie – con­veys the idea of chil­dren play­ing with toys even before a finale which is basi­cal­ly smash­ing dis­parate fig­ures into each oth­er with ​“WHAM­MO!” ono­matopoeia effects. Much like watch­ing a child’s play ses­sion, when­ev­er the humour begins to get a lit­tle stale or the plot­ting becomes a bit exhaust­ing, Dog Man’s ani­ma­tion is there to ensure the joy of cre­ativ­i­ty wins out.