Cats and Dogs **1/2
Directed by Lawrence Guterman
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Elizabeth Perkins, and Alexander Pollock
With the voices of: Alec Baldwin, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sean Hayes, Tobey Maguire, Joe Pantoliano, Jon Lovitz and Susan Sarandon
Rated PG (animal action)
(Read this aloud in a deep, movie-trailer voice) 'A secret war that has gone on for millennia... A war for the domination of Planet Earth... Two superpowers that exist underground, and right under your nose... Cats (drums or thunder) and Dogs (more thunder and drums)!'
Sounds like a really neat concept, doesn't it? It could be really, really cool. All sorts of nifty special effects, perhaps a spoof of the spy-movie genre, it could be a winner. But it's not.
Cats and Dogs is a movie for kids, and kids only. It tries to be a movie for everyone, however, and that leads to its downfall. I went into the movie thinking that it could be loads of fun, and parts of it were. I thought the concept was entertaining, if nothing else. I left disappointed.
The concept remains intact -- as it happens, Cats ruled mankind in Ancient Egypt. Humans were slaves who were freed by the Dogs. Ever since, Dogs have sworn to protect the 'primitive species' of Homo sapiens. Dr. Brody (Goldblum) is a scientist working on making a cure for the allergic reaction people have to dogs. The Cats, under the leadership of Mr. Tinkles (Hayes), feel that this is a very bad thing, and are doing everything in their power to stop it from happening. They start off by 'catnapping' the Brody family's dog, Buddy. A beagle puppy, Lou (Maguire) is sent in as a replacement. Alas, Lou is a bit like Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars -- just a naive kid looking for adventure. The leader of the neighborhood dogs, Butch (Baldwin), is expecting a well-trained Doberman pup, not this wet-nosed kid (sorry, couldn't resist).
Lou is clued into what the Dogs do, and is introduced to Peek (Pantoliano, in a possible nod to his role in The Matrix), who handles surveillance, and Sam (Duncan, who played John Coffey in The Green Mile), who seems to just enjoy being an agent (by doing combat rolls and singing little 'secret-agent' theme songs to himself). The dogs then set about defending the Brody house against Cat invasions -- ninjas, 'The Russian' (a really cool villain), and various other nefarious Cat nastiness.
Enough of the synopsis -- I don't want this to become a spoiler.
I don't think the movie was 'bad' -- it's just that it could have been so much better, and still been family-friendly. There were so many ways to present a concept like this, but it seems like the filmmakers tried to use all of them at the same time and wound up with less instead of more.
They could have taken a Men In Black-type angle -- played the film straight, but used sight-gags and witty dialogue. They could have made it a live-action cartoon, so to speak. They tried, but it was inconsistent. They could have made it Far Side-esque, and played up the physical limitations of cats and dogs. They did plenty of that with the cats, but not with the dogs. It could have been similar to the Toy Story series and presented a secret world that all children dream about, but never actually see. It made an effort to do this, but fell short. Basically, it just spread itself too thin trying to be all things to all people.
My main complaint is just with the inconsistencies in the movie. They start off with realism, then the incorporate cartoon sound-effects. This would have worked if it was a farce, but it isn't. Later on in the film, they start using cartoonish surrealism (think Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Dick Tracy, or most of Tim Burton's films) -- tilted cameras, strange colors, etc. The shift isn't gradual, either. One scene is a nice suburban backyard. The next is full of green lighting and cockeyed cameras. Don't go into this movie expecting Babe -- it isn't.
I have no doubts that children under 10 will like this movie. The pacing is a bit slow at times, but the animals seem to have enough personality to engage their interest. The action sequences are fairly well done. The computer animation isn't on-par with Toy Story, but it isn't bad. There are some clever one-liners, several bits that children will imitate (Don't worry -- nothing that would make a parent blush if the kid did it in public), a few clever sight-gags and background dialogue bits that will get a chuckle out of the parents, but, basically, this is a movie for kids. I would guess that adults will be bored for much of it. Which is better than being annoyed at most of it. If you have children, yes, take them to see this movie. From the reaction I heard from the kids in the audience, they enjoyed it. Adults, on the other hand, will tend to yawn. Rest assured, however, that there isn't any foul language (that I recall), and the potty humor is kept to a minimum. Overall, its heart is in the right place, even if it never gets off the ground.
