Dog Man Review: New Dav Pilkey Adaptation Is Definitely More For Kids Than Adults

Peter Hastings’ Dog Man is a movie for kids, and despite what general connotation might make that read as derogatory, there is nothing inherently wrong with a feature that is made specifically for younger audiences rather than aiming for four quadrant appeal (sometimes parents should just grin and bear it while their young ones be entertained). It has story and pacing outfitted so that it can appeal best to youths with undeveloped attention spans, and while I can’t speak from a direct perspective, I expect that what comes across as chaotic and frenetic translates to non-stop fun in a child’s brain.

Save for its big ending, which does add some emotion and message into the mix, Dog Man is a wholly unserious film, but it’s also earnest and consistent in its ridiculousness. It’s not a font of wit or cleverness, and it principally functions on animal/police tropes for its humor, but it subverts those flaws with a diverting innocence. Its greatest quality is that it fully commits to its silliness, but it’s a silliness that feels exclusively for kids.

Based on author/artist Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants spinoff of the same name, the titular human-animal hybrid is created when police officer Knight and his trusty dog Greg are involved in a bomb detonation during a pursuit of the nefarious Petey The Cat (Pete Davidson). Surgeons attach Greg’s head to Officer Knight’s body to create the new super cop Dog Man (Peter Hastings). The protagonist is successfully able to catch Petey, but the orange-and-black feline is constantly able to find new ways to escape prison, and the blame for these escapes is nonsensically put on the hero who keeps catching him. Responding to outrage from the mayor (Cheri Oteri), the police chief (Lil Rel Howery) takes Dog Man off the case.

While hiding out in his lair, Petey devises all manners of trying to dispatch of his nemesis, from a robot that fires exploding squirrels to giant vacuum cleaner. But his principal plans come together with him first trying to clone himself to create a perfect assistant – resulting in the creation of the young, goodhearted Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins) – and then trying to reengineer and revivify Flippy (Ricky Gervais), a dead fish with telekinetic powers.

Dog Man is hyperactive in its storytelling, constantly flipping around and throwing around new ideas.

Crafting a simple story that young audiences can easily follow is one route a filmmaker can take, but Peter Hastings opts to go in the exact opposite direction – launching a constant barrage of ideas at the screen (if the kids don’t react to one bit, there’s another one coming seconds later). The various plots are built with backup plots that all stack on top of each other: Dog Man repeatedly find and capture Petey, who is simultaneously executing both the clone and Flippy plans, and while Li’l Petey ends up being cared for by Dog Man, who is deeply lonely, Petey gets put off his game by the arrival of his estranged dad (Stephen Root). And that’s without mentioning the conflict between Dog Man and Chief, who is in love with a local news report named Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher).

It’s a lot to throw at kids, particularly given that all of this is jammed into an 89 minute runtime – but I will say that it manages to mostly pull everything together in the third act to provide a satisfying conclusion.

Cute canine antics in Dog Man will delight younger audiences,

Young audiences may have a touch of trouble following along with everything that’s happening in Dog Man, but as they keep all of the puzzle pieces together in their minds, they will regardless find plenty to giggle at. If there’s a cute or funny thing that you love about our canine companions, you can be sure that it gets a joke or a reference in the film, from over-enthusiastic pouncing and slobbering to rolling around on dead things to antipathy towards postal workers. It’s akin to a PG version of the R-rated comedy Strays from 2023 in that way and it’s a well that dries up pretty quick for anyone who has spent multiple decades watching dogs get used for laughs in comedies.

Dog Man does a tremendous job adapting the artistic style of Dav Pilkey.

Devotees to the work of Dav Pilkey will certainly be pleased, as Dog Man is a wonderful cinematic explosion of his beloved, auteur style. While I’ll be upfront and note that I didn’t see 2017’s Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, my point of comparison would be The Peanuts Movie from two years prior, which likewise did a tremendous job translating a well-known aesthetic from 2D into 3D. Handwritten (and often misspelled) signs maintain the charm of Pilkey’s art while the animators delightfully render a world that in no way feels realistic – in design or physics – but has a wonderful tactile quality that provides vibrancy.

I recall seeing a number of movies like Dog Man when I was a kid. After seeing these titles in theaters and laughing like wild, it would become a light obsession: I’d cut out reviews and ads from newspapers and scenes would be recreated with my friends at recess. But then a month would pass, and I would find a new TV show or film to mildly obsess over. For kids, it won’t make a massive impact and become a modern classic, but it certainly will entertain.