Ticketworthy! Presenting: Dog Man

If you looked at the trailer or movie poster for Dog Man and rolled your eyes, thinking that it was going to be a loud, silly, dumb movie that kids will love and adults will groan at, you’d be right. If you thought that it might have parts in it that dig a little deeper and might genuinely be enjoyable for all ages, you’d also be right. Despite its appearance, this is a movie with layers.

At a surface level, I’d call Dog Man relentless. It’s as though the writers sat around and pitched every pun and gag idea that they could come up with, couldn’t pick one, and just decided to use all of them. There’s flying mechanical bees, an evil psychic fish, a clone, squirrel bombs, a giant vacuum cleaner, a volcano, living evil buildings, a mecha mailman, and so much more. You might think “how can you cram all of that in one movie and have it make sense?” The answer is it kind of doesn’t, and I mean that as a compliment.

It would have been easy to focus in on the titular Dog Man, a creation made from the body of a human police officer and the head of his faithful canine, and just tell the story of him/them hunting down the evil cat that caused their horrible injury in the first place. That’s an interesting enough story for this kind of movie, but I think it would have been missing pretty much all the parts of Dog Man that I actually liked.

You see, Dog Man communicates entirely in barks, growls and howls. No offense to writer/director Peter Hastings, who voices Dog Man, but that could have been a tough character to focus the entire movie on. Instead, he makes the correct decision to let the movie be co-led by Petey the Evil Cat (Pete Davidson), the very villain that Dog Man is hunting. As a result, we get a story about family, parenthood, abandonment, and trauma as Petey explores who he is and what he truly wants out of life. It can be a little strange at times, as these heartfelt moments have to find room between the flurry of dog-based puns, but it works pretty well.

A huge part of the reason it works is Pete Davidson. I’ve always thought Davidson was a better actor than he gets credit for, but the way he carries this material is impressive. The movie is almost always worse when Petey isn’t on screen, and Davidson strikes a perfect balance between his comedic talents and the more dramatic moments. It’s clear he really threw himself into this role.

In fact, you could say the same for most of the cast. They may not all have the screentime that Petey gets, but every character was voiced with such joy that it’s hard to not imagine how much fun these recording sessions must have been. I’m not sure what it was about this movie that made them all buy-in so hard, but it’s a huge part of the reason Dog Man is watchable.

Sadly, for all that praise, there’s still plenty wrong with the movie. The breakneck pace that the plot moves at is necessary to fit in all the jokes, but it can be hard to settle in. When you’re watching Dog Man arrest Petey for the 8th time, make sure you don’t blink or you’ll find yourself watching a mech battle and have no idea how you got there. That pacing might be fine and justifiable if all the jokes landed, but a lot of them don’t. It’s also a shame that the actual main character just...isn’t that interesting. Dog Man is overshadowed by pretty much every other character in a movie that is supposed to be about him. 

Still, I found myself having a good time more often than not. The soundtrack and the animation are both above average and the actors do a wonderful job of elevating the movie. Ultimately, this is a movie aimed squarely at a young audience, and it knows it. I believe that kids will absolutely love it, but I’m also pleasantly surprised that there’s a good bit for parents to enjoy as well.