The first trailer for the “Dog Man” movie was released to the world on Sept. 17, 2024. It got much praise for its stunning animation and faithful art style, but there was near radio silence in terms of marketing from Dreamworks after the first trailer, which worried many fans. Luckily, the film gained massive traction after it was released and surpassed its budget on the first opening weekend. Many fans have been as if the film surprises viewers in any way and if it is a retelling of the books. As a fan of the books, I was amazingly pleased with how everything was presented in the movie.
The references and logic from the books were cute and the animation was fantastic. I think the childish wonder of the series really shines through in the movie and almost every character is portrayed very well. The titular character himself, Dog Man, does take a bit of a backseat in order to give the main villain of the movie, Petey, the spotlight. This is to be expected since it happens this way in the book series anyway.
Personally speaking, I think Petey is probably the best part of the movie. Pete Davidson does a surprisingly fantastic job at voicing the arch rival to the titular character and he really is the heart that drives the movie. Alongside him in the cast are Lucas Hopkins Calderon (playing Lil Petey), Lil Rey Howery (playing the Chief of Police), Isla Fisher (playing Sarah Hatoff the news reporter), Ricky Gervais (playing Flippy the evil fish), and Stephen Root (playing “Grampa,”also known as Petey’s dad).
Unfortunately, the movie’s pacing is a bit off, and sometimes, it is super fast and rushes through important moments. This also applies to jokes and there were many times when I didn’t exactly catch what a character was saying because they were saying it so quickly. Then sometimes the movie would slow down during a more deep and serious scene and luckily those scenes are the best parts of the movie.
The only thing I truly dislike about this movie is Flippy, the evil fish (Voiced by Ricky Gervais). The way he was handled is rather unfortunate. His backstory is extremely rushed so we don’t understand his villain like character or what his actual motivations are. He has little to no fanfare, which sucks because he’s actually a really cool character in the books.
If the movie were longer, we could’ve seen a better adaptation of his backstory that was shown in the second book of the Dog Man series “Dog Man: Unleashed” that we could actually care about him. This can get confusing because we’re supposed to care about him in the end and feel bad for him, but again we don’t actually know him so the ending feels very flat, forced, and unearned. To me, the way Flippy is handled is more frustrating considering he is my favorite character in the books.
The movie does have some nice messages about found family and the power of optimism, but I just wish they could have expanded on that more. The movie is only an hour and thirty minutes long which isn’t enough time for a movie adaptation of a popular book series to go over everything. I wish the movie was longer to let viewers enjoy the backstory, help it not seem so rushed, and prevent it from ending so abruptly. Nonetheless, I would absolutely recommend this movie to fans of the books and fans of animation in general. I think it is yet another hit for Dreamworks in their expanding pantheon of animated film adaptations of popular books, the likes of which include films like, Captain Underpants (2017), The Wild Robot (2024), and How To Train Your Dragon (2012), all of which you can watch on Peacock.
