All January long, I’ve been mentioning (okay, “whining”) that the month is a dead zone for new movie releases. So it makes sense that the biggest release of the month would be one that opened on the very last day (Friday the 31st) before making most of its money in February. With an estimated $36 million in its first three days, “Dog Man” is already the biggest new movie of 2025. And its success isn’t just commercial, the joyful film also gets my first recommendation of the year. It’s a chilly recommendation, appropriate for January I suppose, but a recommendation nonetheless.
The animated film is a spinoff from the “Captain Underpants” franchise. Apparently it’s based on a comic book created by the two kid protagonists of that series. Although I’ve never read any of the books or seen the 2017 film, this film does indeed seem like the brainchild of actual children. This is good because the film never loses its childlike sense of wonder or energy. But it’s also a hindrance because the story can sometimes seem like it was thrown together for a school assignment. It was like one of the kids realized at the last minute that their story was nothing but jokes and action, so they halfheartedly threw in some serious moments and a lesson so the teacher wouldn’t take points off for lacking substance.
The story goes that human police officer Knight (Peter Hastings) and his dog partner Greg fail in an attempt to disable a bomb planted by the evil Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson). The resulting explosion destroys Knight’s head and Greg’s body, but thanks to a dubious feat of medical engineering, a singular being with the dog’s head and the human’s body can be salvaged. The resulting Dog Man is a “Supa Cop” with Greg’s smarts and Knight’s physical conditioning – the best of both worlds. He’s a great boon to the community, much to the chagrin of the unpopular Chief (Lil Rel Howery), but his sights are set on shutting down the villainous Petey for good.
Petey, irate that he unintentionally just created the best cop in the city, clones himself in an attempt to double his brainpower and productivity, but this too backfires. He does indeed get another version of himself, but as a newborn… or at least as an adorable young kitten (Lucas Hopkins Calderon) that essentially serves as a son, in need of love and care. Petey isn’t cut out for fatherhood because he’s so evil, and because he doesn’t need a youngster interfering with his plan to resurrect a telekinetic fish (Ricky Gervais) to defeat Dog Man, and because he had a bad relationship with his own father (Stephen Root). Petey has so many problems at once that he winds up stealing the movie from Dog Man, whose need to be a do-gooder following his creation is predictably commonplace and surprisingly dull at times. Though I did get a big laugh out of a heartbroken Dog Man eating big spoonfuls of dog food like it was ice cream.
Ultimately it’s the child character that brings out the best in the adults around him, and in a way that’s the perfect metaphor for this childish movie likely bringing out the best in the adults that watch it (if you can call my low-level recommendation my “best”). Simply put, even though this movie doesn’t do much for me, it’s practically impossible to dislike. Even though I wish the heartfelt moments weren’t so forced, there were fewer go-nowhere storylines (the Chief practically disappears toward the end of the movie), and the humor was more to my taste (I don’t like jokes about dogs licking things), I just can’t stay mad at a movie this silly and sweet. “Dog Man” is less a movie for adults to enjoy and more a movie for them to enjoy how much their kids enjoy it. But I can at least picture how much kids are bound to enjoy it, and that helped me enjoy it.
Grade: B-
“Dog Man” is rated PG for some action and rude humor. Its running time is 89 minutes.
Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.
Last Update: Feb 03, 2025 10:03 am CST
