The spin-off film from Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie – both based on Dav Pilkey’s bestselling children’s novels – is a riot of colour and activity. Dog Man dials up the frenetic nature of Pilkey’s mischief-packed graphic novels aimed at anybody who is over five years old or wishes to return to their childhood.
Peter Hastings’s animated film follows the human-canine hybrid created after brave-but-dumb police officer Knight and his loyal-and-intelligent pooch Greg die in a bomb explosion. A nurse has the bright idea of stitching the right parts together and voila! The result is Dog Man, whose vocabulary consists of “ruff ruff”, “ooooooo” and other such non-verbal sounds.
Fond of leaping all over irascible but well-meaning police chief simply named Chief (voiced by Lil Rel Howery), Dog Man is also sharp enough to sense trouble, which comes in the form of Petey. The “world’s most evilest cat”, Petey (voiced by Pete Davidson) is an ace inventor always looking for ways to defeat Dog Man. Petey clones himself in the hope of expanding his army, but the result – the kitten Lil Petey (voiced by Lucas Hopkins Calderon) – isn’t quite what he expected.
Dog Man happily snuggles in the corner that says ‘Attention-deficit kids accompanied by parents looking to forget their worries and giggle into their popcorn tubs’. There’s even a droid called 80-HD.
The story combines plots from three Dog Man books. Apart from the gizmos dreamed up by Petey, there’s a mean-spirited fish named Flippy (voiced by Rickey Gervais) that causes buildings to come to life and mumble “gooba gooba”.
Some of the action mimics the time it takes to turn a page in one of Pilkey’s novels. The 89-minute movie whooshes by before you know it.
The resulting adventure entertainingly brings to life the giddy fun and manic energy of Pilkey’s books, although young fans and even some grown-ups might get a bit bored of the Disney/Pixar-style blather about family values.
