Dog Man (2025)
For those unfamiliar with Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel character Dog Man, he’s a half-dog, half-human police officer. This comic chimaera is the result of a surgical procedure carried out after Officer Knight and his trusty dog Greg are blown up while defusing a bomb. Greg’s head is grafted to Officer Knight's body. Post surgery, Dog Man (Peter Hastings) remains an officer of the law and continues to track his nemesis, Petey (Pete Davidson), an orange cat and criminal genius. However, despite positive media coverage and a high arrest rate, Dog Man incurs the ire of his Chief (Lil Rel Howery) who is jealous of his success. Furthermore, Dog Man becomes depressed due to the loss of his owner, girlfriend and former home. Meanwhile, Petey decides to clone himself in an attempt to find a worthy assistant and also plots to resurrect a deceased super villain, Flippy, who is an evil telekinetic fish.
Dog Man is a visually impressive animated comedy that succeeds in being accessible to both children and adults. Kids will like the madcap humour and frenetic mayhem, where adults will smirk and guffaw at the abundant film references, pop culture humour and satire of commonplace cinematic tropes. Within the first seven minutes there is a homage to RoboCop and it is not an obvious one, clearly showing Peter Hastings’ (who also wrote and directed the film) movie literacy. There are continual sight gags, clever puns and good old-fashioned slapstick. The film has a bright colour palette and a very knowing style. It calls out its own use of a montage and continuously nods and winks at the audience. Dog Man is certainly well made and clever, especially with regard to the contrast between Dog Man’s boundless love and Petey’s cynical philosophy.
Despite all these good points, Dog Man starts to show its weaknesses after about 50 minutes. The fast pace of the story and the continuous barrage of jokes becomes a bit of a hindrance. The audience doesn’t get time to think or take stock. While you’re laughing at one gag, you potentially miss another. There’s also a celebrity voice actor cameo that doesn’t really add any value to the proceedings and stands out like a sore thumb. The secondary plot about Flippy feels like it’s a contrivance to get the plot from A to B, rather than a valid theme to be explored. Dog Man also feels like it’s lapsing into fan service at times. Hence, although there is much to enjoy both visually and narratively about this clever adaptation, the 90 minute running time can be quite taxing for adults. Children will probably have no issue with the fast pace and bombast.
