Dog Man the movie released in theaters on January 31st. Recently, I had the opportunity to go see The Dog Man movie in theaters, and I was very excited to see it.
Dog Man is a film based on the comics created by author Dav Pilkey who previously created Captain Underpants, Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot, the Dumb Bunnies, and many more.
Dog Man was even mentioned in the Captain Underpants series. In the last volume, it was teased saying, “See you in the next series.”
I think it was at a book fair in 2016 when I encountered Dog Man. I bought it, I read it, and I loved it. I kept buying every book as it was coming out. I even bought the same book again at a book fair when it sold a Dog Man plushie along with it. When I won an award for those who love reading, I think my librarian picked up that I liked reading because I read a lot of Dog Man books.
Captain Underpants: The Epic First Movie opened in 2017. After watching the Captain Underpants movie, my brother and I promised that if they ever animated a Dog Man movie and put it on the big screen, we would have to watch it.
Fast forwarding to 2024 when Dreamworks announced they would animate another series by the same person, it had me in shock. I wanted to see it because it’s based on a book that I used to read back in elementary school. My brother read some of it as well, so we were on board to watch it.
My brother and I had lots of questions, though, such as, “Is it going to be good?” or “Will they translate every detail from the book to the movie?”
We got into the theater and bought the exclusive popcorn bucket and the cup made to promote the film. We had rowdy people next to us, but still, it didn’t bother us.
It starts with Officer Night and his companion Officer Greg the Dog. Like any other day, their goal is to stop the main villain of the story, Petey, the most evil cat.
Petey thinks of a plan to get rid of Officer Night and Greg the Dog, but his plan seems to backfire at the end. They end up in the hospital resulting in them being combined into one person named Dog Man.
My brother and I had the same reaction towards the movie: “It was a good movie, but we wanted to see more because it felt short.”
In this film, they mixed all of the Dog Man book entries into one movie, so the pacing was fast.
As a movie, it was ok. The jokes were funny, the animation was amazing as well, it felt new and different and that’s ok.
The difference between Pilkey’s past two books is that Captain Underpants was funnier, while Dog Man maintains a serious, heartfelt story, and so were the movies.
What bothers me the most about the movie is that the franchise will be milked for years to come.
It was geared to kids rather than adults. If you’re someone wanting to watch, just know it will give you some chuckles and if you have a little sibling cousin, or anyone young, I think they will get a kick out of it more.
