I loved the premise presented in the trailer so much that I went out and bought all
thirteen (!) Dog Man books .. I read them all, over the course of a month..! It's a unique and very fun-to-read series of books, with some genuine heartfelt moments buried under its surface-level silliness.
This movie cherry-picks a bunch of disparate plot points and moments from about eight of the books. It's a bit like the
Dick Tracy movie, in that it seems they threw everything they possibly could into one film, knowing there may not be a second one (which -- in
DT's case -- proved to be true). A few (very minor) plot points are changed from the books .. and Petey's character arc from unrepentent 'evilest cat' to one of the 'good guys' gets a supa-speedrun.
So, yeah, this movie is a bit of a beautiful mess. I still enjoyed it .. but if I
hadn't read the books, I wonder whether I would've been able to keep up with what was going on. There are definitely a lot of easter eggs and sight gags which will delight those who have read the books.
Visually, this is on par with Blue Sky's
The Peanuts Movie. Dav Pilkey's simplistic drawing style is captured perfectly. Color and lighting are put to dazzling and effective use throughout.
And the score is incredible! I'll definitely be purchasing the soundtrack ASAP.
There are some directions
Dog Man could go, in a sequel .. since there are a few plot points and characters from the books that aren't in this film. I still think they tried to cram a little too much into this one, though .. so, we'll see.
BTW, the
Bad Guys short
rules! It was very fun revisiting those characters, and the ending punchline was note-perfect.
