-By Maitland McDonagh
For movie details, please click here.
The CGI-heavy sequel to 2001’s underwhelming
Cats & Dogs gets off to a terrific start with a
witty, James Bond-style credit sequence scored to Shirley Bassey’s
cover of “Get the Party Started.” The rest of
Cats & Dogs:
The Revenge of Kitty Galore in no way lives up to its
meticulous inventiveness, but contains enough clever touches to
keep adults from dozing off while their kids giggle at the sight of
house pets using computers, rocketing around with jet packs and
kicking ass like Jackie Chan.
Lou (voice of Neil Patrick Harris), an adorable puppy in the first
movie, has grown up to head DOG, a top-secret organization
dedicated to protecting the human race: Just think “The Man from
U.N.C.L.E.”’s Alexander Waverly played by a sweet-faced beagle. A
dastardly plot to scramble doggie brains via a high-frequency
signal and turn them against their masters is underway,
masterminded by rogue feline Kitty Galore (voice of Bette Midler).
Once an agent of MEOWS, DOG’s feline counterpart, she took a
Joker-like fall into a vat of noxious chemicals that left her a
sociopathic, hairless horror. All that stands between dog lovers
and the canine apocalypse is an unthinkable alliance between DOG
agents Butch (voice of Nick Nolte) and Diggs (voice of James
Marsden) and MEOWS’ Katherine (Christina Applegate), a sleek feline
with mad ninja skills.
A special-effects artist once said that it's easy to create
monsters and aliens but hard to make a cat, because everyone knows
exactly what cats look like. The truth about
Cats & Dogs
is that despite the efforts of its A-list effects crew, every cut
from a real animal to an animatronic or CG stand-in is joltingly
obvious. That shouldn’t hurt the movie’s box office, because little
kids won’t care and where small fry go, parents follow, sit and
stay. But it’s a shame, because many of the inevitable pop-culture
jokes are actually clever, and the set design is occasionally
brilliant. Of course, MEOW’s underground command center would look
like a deluxe cat condo with a ’60s molded-plastic and
shag-carpeting vibe, accessorized with state-of-the-art computers
and flat-screen TVs!
Film Review: Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Pets play spy games in this children’s movie that both spoofs high-tech espionage pictures and caters to single-digit sensibilities with gags about butt-sniffing canines.
July 28, 2010
-By Maitland McDonagh
For movie details, please click here.
The CGI-heavy sequel to 2001’s underwhelming
Cats & Dogs gets off to a terrific start with a witty, James Bond-style credit sequence scored to Shirley Bassey’s cover of “Get the Party Started.” The rest of
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore in no way lives up to its meticulous inventiveness, but contains enough clever touches to keep adults from dozing off while their kids giggle at the sight of house pets using computers, rocketing around with jet packs and kicking ass like Jackie Chan.
Lou (voice of Neil Patrick Harris), an adorable puppy in the first movie, has grown up to head DOG, a top-secret organization dedicated to protecting the human race: Just think “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”’s Alexander Waverly played by a sweet-faced beagle. A dastardly plot to scramble doggie brains via a high-frequency signal and turn them against their masters is underway, masterminded by rogue feline Kitty Galore (voice of Bette Midler). Once an agent of MEOWS, DOG’s feline counterpart, she took a Joker-like fall into a vat of noxious chemicals that left her a sociopathic, hairless horror. All that stands between dog lovers and the canine apocalypse is an unthinkable alliance between DOG agents Butch (voice of Nick Nolte) and Diggs (voice of James Marsden) and MEOWS’ Katherine (Christina Applegate), a sleek feline with mad ninja skills.
A special-effects artist once said that it's easy to create monsters and aliens but hard to make a cat, because everyone knows exactly what cats look like. The truth about
Cats & Dogs is that despite the efforts of its A-list effects crew, every cut from a real animal to an animatronic or CG stand-in is joltingly obvious. That shouldn’t hurt the movie’s box office, because little kids won’t care and where small fry go, parents follow, sit and stay. But it’s a shame, because many of the inevitable pop-culture jokes are actually clever, and the set design is occasionally brilliant. Of course, MEOW’s underground command center would look like a deluxe cat condo with a ’60s molded-plastic and shag-carpeting vibe, accessorized with state-of-the-art computers and flat-screen TVs!
