Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dog Man’ on VOD, a Maniacally Fun Barrage of Juvenile Jokes

Manic hyper-sugarified Pixie Stix are the primary component of Dog Man (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), a manic animated story from the Captain Underpants Cinematic Universe. So lickety-split juvenile comedy is the order of the day, courtesy youth-oriented graphic-novelist Dav Pilkey, who mines random-ass puns and gags and little gross bits from the rich ore of his slightly demented imagination. Peter Hastings – a veteran of animation whose credits include producing Animaniacs and the Captain Underpants TV series – directs his first film since 2002’s The Country Bears, and the result is, in a word, insane. And this is where one might admit, “Reader, I laughed” with equal parts pride and shame. So: Reader, I laughed. With no shame, though. As it should be. 

DOG MAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: DATELINE: OHKAY CITY. The metropolis is forever terrorized by Petey (Pete Davidson), an orange cat who’s possibly named in response-slash-homage to another kid-book cat, the ultracool Pete the Cat. Petey is “the world’s most evilest cat” who is that way because. Yes, just because. He’s a true chaos-reignser if there ever was one. On his trail is Officer Knight (Hastings) and his loyal dog Greg (also Hastings), who find a time-bomb Petey placed on top of the Abandoned Expendable Warehouse, which you know is an abandoned expendable warehouse by the sign on top of it that says Abandoned Expendable Warehouse. Such is this movie’s brand of humor. Anyway, Officer Knight and Greg cut the wrong wire and in the next scene a doctor stitches Greg’s head on top of Knight’s body. One being, two lives saved. Sort of. 

And thus born is Dog Man (also Hastings again), who walks upright but barks like a dog and eats like a dog and acts like a dog and is therefore more dog than man, mostly because the part with the brain is the dog’s. Petey’s not happy about this. He thought he disposed of his nemesisises but ended up creating what the Ohkay City press dubs a “supa cop,” who routinely captures Petey, who routinely breaks out of prison only to be captured again only to break out again ad infinitum. The Mayor (Cheri Oteri) blames Dog Man for the repeated breakouts instead of the prison system, which is the brand of unjust anti-logic that strikes me as the movie’s most realistic element. So the exasperated police chief (Lil Rel Howery) takes Dog Man off the Petey beat and I don’t know why I summarized this part because Dog Man ends up chasing Petey all over town anyway.

The narrative touches upon the existential nature of the phenomenon that is Dog Man when Dog Man goes back to his old house to learn that his wife/owner has vamoosed, thus avoiding some serious weirdness that would probably be inappropriate for this family-friendly movie. Elsewhere, Petey, flustered by a series of destructive inventions that have failed to vanquish his archenemy, clones himself for reasons that I may have missed but probably aren’t important anyway. Thus born is L’il Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon), a sweet and tender tabby who regular Petey just doesn’t have the psychological capacity to care for. So L’il Petey pals up with Dog Man, and ends up being torn between his negative-nancy “papa” and nice-guy quasi-adopter. There’s also a plot involving a diabolical robot fish, voiced by Ricky Gervais, who brings buildings to life in order to destroy everything. Something probably has to be done about that? 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: My eyes haven’t goggled and my brain hasn’t been battered like this since Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs established itself as the poster child for Help Me Please Too Many Jokes Too Fast. Dog Man is more fun, though.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Outside Bodies Bodies Bodies, I’ve yet to be charmed by Davidson, but his voice work as Petey is inspired and amusing, capturing the character’s burned-then-frozen-but-not-beyond-thawing heart.

Memorable Dialogue: The doctor drops the bad news: “I’m sorry to say, Mr. Cop, that your head is just no good anymore.”

Sex and Skin: Ewww, no!

Our Take: The grade-schooler irreverence here is off the charts, but with amazingly few boogers and farts. So Dog Man is a fresh blast of air in that sense. All these dogs and cats amidst an overwhelmingly joke-dense movie, and there isn’t a pooper-scooper or litter-box gag to be found. And I am astounded. Salvation for cynics everywhere! 

My advice for consuming this overly hectic and overstuffed buffet of yuks: Don’t try to keep up. Approach Dog Man like you would a David Lynch film – traditional narrative is pretty much out the window, so the work is essentially asking you to lay back and let the experience wash over you. Appreciate individual moments as you can, then take a moment afterward to see what sunk in thematically. And at that point, Dog Man emerges as an anarchic satire of children’s entertainment with scattered bits of self-referential comedy (the chief: “Go and arrest Petey and I don’t care if it takes a montage!”) and just a touch of softhearted emotional moosh about loneliness and how parenting can change a person. There’s even some sins-of-the-father-ness that emerges like a turtle’s head when Petey’s dad (Stephen Root) turns up to illustrate how the dook doesn’t fall too far from the butt.

I apologize. The pre-pubescent spirit of the movie is infectious.

So, I liked that stuff. I also liked how good the movie is at capturing Dog Man’s essential dogness, with the manic bursts of energy, the fixation on squirrels, the sloppy-fast consumption of truly vile-looking canned dog food and the unconditional selflessness that urges him to cheer up a random mopey stranger with a cuddly nuzzle. The animation is a distinctively winning blend of 2-D comic-bookiness and neo-3-D CG ’toons – it has an aesthetic! And a good one! It makes an unnecessary Aliens reference, a more unnecessary Apocalypse Now reference and an even more unnecessary Die Hard reference, but don’t hold that against it. I’m a cat person more than a dog person and the movie won me over despite its adoption of the interminable prejudice against “evil” cats in far too many contexts. Cats are great, loving companions, and less work than dogs! It’s true! Also, Dog Man is really funny, especially if you’re open to pretending you’re nine years old again. I shall not woof.

Our Call: Reader. I laughed. Nothing more important than that. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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