With Dreamworks making another book adaptation of a movie and another book from Dav Pilkey, creator of ‘Captain Underpants’ (1997) Dreamworks had made a wonderful adaptation of back in 2017 with director David Soren to make ‘Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie’ which would get a show a year later in 2018 with ‘The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants’ which had gotten three seasons and a few specials. Dreamworks would return with the help of Peter Hastings as the director to make ‘Dog Man’ (2025) based on the series with the same name Dav Pilkey had authorized and illustrated back in 2016, which is still continuing to this day with the new book ‘Dog Man Big Jim Begins’ releasing in the fall of 2025.
The movie contains a cast of characters with Officer Knight and Greg the Dog which both form Dog Man himself (Peter Hastings), Chief (Lil Rel Howery), Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson) and Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher) who put in a well done acting in their parts of the movie.
For the plot, it has both Knight and Greg attempting to defuse a bomb, but due to Greg being color blind, Knight makes a mistake that leads to both in the hospital. However, things aren’t all bad when the Nurse thought of the idea to sew Gregs head onto Knight’s body, resulting in the creation of Dog Man which brings the attention to Petey, the world’s most evilest cat, and goes on from there, almost similar to the original books. One problem with the plot is that it’s pretty fast paced and doesn’t really give anything to breathe, on the other hand, there is still enough to bring in some touching and memorable scenes to show some information about the characters, although if they plan sequel, it could definitely help add more to the story aside from exposition scenes.
The movie, despite the rushed plot, backs it up with some decently funny jokes, most are pretty funny, though others get a bit repetitive. Despite all that, there are some tongue and cheek ones that I’m sure some younger viewers and adults would get a kick out of.
Most of this is also mixed with stunning and colorful scenes, which includes the animation in most other scenes, it’s not as smooth as Captain Underpants, having a more stiff type animation that other movies had like Sony’s ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018) or even one of Dreamworks other projects like ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’, where they animate in twos instead of the other type of animation, other than that, it really carries the visuals of what they done with Captain Underpants where parts feel like they were drawn by an actual hand and don’t line up right, like how they were made by two fourth graders.
This brings to the designs. This starts with characters who look simple to draw like Petey or Chief look extremely well, which also applies to other characters with more detail like Dog Man himself or other characters not mentioned to avoid any spoilers, although sometimes, the character designs change quite a bit such as Sarah who in the books is seen with a orange buttoned coat, a lavender purse and curved hair. However in the movie, She is seen with a blue coat, carrying a brown purse and having much more straight hair along with having a lanyard that carries a picture of herself. To many who have never seen or read Dog Man, It’s not much of an Issue for designs to change, but to others, it can definitely be a problem, but one thing you have to remember, this is a movie and Captain Underpants for its movie and show had some design changes to character that were pretty major.
Coming off from the characters leads to the music, which it sounds really good, but it does use a bit more licensed songs than needed, some which fit scenes decently enough, some of the ones that aren’t licensed songs sound just as good as they are.
If you’re a huge Dog Man fan or a younger viewer, I’d highly recommend this, although for many others such as older teens or even adults, this may not be for you.
