Dog Man
Written and directed by Peter Hastings
Starring Peter Hastings, Pete Davidson, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher
Rated PG
Runtime: 1 hour and 29 minutes
In theaters January 31

by Tessa Swehla, Associate Editor

I have to disclose upfront: I have never read any Captain Underpants or Dog Man. I am the right age to have read them in elementary school as the first one came out in 1997, but even my best subterfuge at my local public library could not sneak a book with the word underpants in it past my mother. It is with this limitation that I come to the first film adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man, itself a spin-off of the Captain Underpants book series.

Written and directed by Peter Hastings, who was hired due to his experience working on the TV series The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, Dog Man dares to ask the question: what if a cop and his K-9 were both fatally injured on the job and the only way to save them was to perform a Frankensteinian surgery to create an entirely new being with the body of a human and the head of a dog? This is already more body horror than I’m used to in a movie intended for children, but the film plays it as a silly origin story, introducing Dog Man (Peter Hastings, who provides the vocal effects of barking and whining as Dog Man is nonverbal) as an amalgamation of Officer Knight and Greg the dog, with the strengths of both and none of the weaknesses. In fact, Dog Man has more superhero flicks in its DNA than cop films: Dog Man’s nemesis is Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson) who has a not-so-secret villain lair and comes up with almost as many gadgets as Dr. Doofenshmirtz in his obsessive attempts to defeat Dog Man. Their rivalry is carefully documented by reporter Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher) and agonized over by police chief, Chief (Lil Rel Howery), Dog Man’s boss. However, a second act complication emerges when Petey decides to clone himself, accidentally creating Lil’ Petey, a kind kitten who bonds with both Petey and Dog Man.

By far the best part of Dog Man is the animation. Pilkey’s signature style is childlike and cartoony, which is both an homage to Pilkey’s secondary school daydream origins of the characters and a smart way of making the story more accessible and inspirational to younger audiences (the graphic novels are rated 6+). The Dreamworks team has translated this design into 3D animation while still preserving the simplicity and flatness of the characters, in what I can only describe as a 2½D. As has been a trend in recent animated films like Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse (2018) and Teenage Mutant Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023), the film is animated with a lower frame rate, making movements more stylized and choppier. These choices make the animation look like images drawn on a page, evoking the graphic novel while still transforming the action into something more kinetic. The offbeat creativity and general silliness of the characters and setting had both the children and adults in my screening giggling through the entire film. At its best, Dog Man feels like a story told by a child, albeit an incredibly imaginative and technically proficient child.

Where Dog Man gets a little rocky is in its ruminations on parenting. The emerging relationship between Petey, Lil’ Petey, and Dog Man that takes up most of the last two acts of the film is complicated, to say the least. Petey doesn’t want a child, having been abandoned by his own father as a kitten, and his initial indifference creates a gap in care for Lil’ Petey, which Dog Man happily fills. It’s a sweet and surprisingly nuanced storyline, but it clashes tonally with the cartoonish silliness of the rest of the film. I don’t know if this storyline is told the same way in the graphic novel, but, here, Petey’s progression feels like an adult writer working through his own anxiety about parenthood, which is a different narrative voice than the one of the child I referenced in the previous paragraph. This shifting voice causes the film to feel disjointed, especially when compared to recent children’s films and franchises–The Wild Robot (2024) and Despicable Mes one through four come to mind–that explore these same anxieties much more cohesively and elegantly. Dog Man’s execution feels clumsy in comparison. Lil’ Petey is also not as compelling a character as the children from those films as he exists mainly as an avatar of goodness that annoys Petey with pretty standard childlike behaviors but doesn’t really have a personality beyond that.

That being said, I doubt a young child or fan of the graphic novels will be as invested in Petey’s storyline as they are in Dog Man’s, so they may not notice the disconnect. They will also probably not be as distracted by the voice of Ricky Gervais as Flippy the Fish, a third act villain, as I was. Dog Man is a fun movie, invested in preposterous imagination and optimism. It’s a great choice for spending 89 minutes with your children (or by yourself) in a world filled with possibility and laughter.

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