Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Well, the official website for "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" has a paw for a mouse pointer, the movie uses most every lazy pun possible about pets, and a reviewer has already claimed the movie marks the end of civilization as we know it. With such prospects, a film about talking cats and dogs coming together to fight off Kitty Galore (voiced by Bette Midler) doesn't eye well for adults. And it doesn't. Any mathematicians in the theater can better spend their time tracking the noticeable upward curve of boredom and silliness the longer the movie runs (the pet gags during the end credits don't count).

Aren't kids movies like this supposed to be funny despite their absurdity? It took 9 years to bring this sequel of "Cats & Dogs" to the theaters, which gave it plenty of time to spread a wide umbrella for big name voices. Nick Nolte's deep scratchy voice took to the end credits to figure out, but it stands out in his role as a scrappy mentor dog, Butch, the muscle of a secret agency run by semi-intelligent talking dogs.

We learn that dogs have an underground spy organization where no human has ever entered, appropriately outfitted with hi-tech gadgets in the Bond tradition and specially tailored for dog clichés. Cats have a similar underground facility for their secret organization, named MEOWS. The first pet puns are quirky and tone setting, but after the third or fourth - and when combined with lame cultural references (including Hannibal Lecter and who knows what else) - it becomes torture.

The main character is a German shepherd police dog named Diggs (James Marsden), who joins a band of unlikely heroes to try to protect humans against Kitty Galore. Diggs follows the 'Dirty Harry' template of the ends justifies his means, that is, he causes havoc while taking down a madman and tends to set off fiery explosions in the process. So, of course, he's recruited by Butch (Nick Nolte) to join the secret dog organization. Diggs and Butch reluctantly join teams with a top kitty agent, Catherine (Christina Applegate), from MEOWs. Along for the ride is a pea brained pigeon, Seamus (Katt Williams), to provide comic relief.

The plot is adequately thin and senseless. They battle against Kitty Galore (voiced by Bette Midler), a hairless Sphinx cat, who plans to enslave humans and take over the world. Her plan is to use malevolent sound waves, from a weapon called "The Call of the Wild" (by the way), at an ultra low frequency (just for dogs) to trigger all dogs to violently rebel against humans. Humans will have to lock them all in kennels. But the movie forgets to mention how Kitty Galore intends to conquer humans. Will she change the frequencies and use the weapon on us? She doesn't specify, but perhaps she could change to an appropriate frequency to trigger our caveman impulses, or something.

Kitty Galore is funny as she reluctantly placates her not so magical magician owner. She became evil because her previous owners treated her like a freak and threw her out after she fell into a vat of hair removal cream (like the Joker from "Batman"). The movie has a couple other funny moments with a house filled of too-lazy-to-move high cats, and a goofy Calico cat voiced by Wallace Shawn (lampooning his role in "The Princess Bride"). Other stars take part in hopes of success, including Neil Patrick Harris, Roger Moore, and Joe Pantoliano, but it doesn't help much.

Some of the most effective scenes are ones where pets give normal pet reactions. The audience actually responded to Diggs whimpering as he was locked in his cage by his former cop partner, played by Chris O'Donnell (in one of the few human roles). The pets only pretend to act normal around humans, but on occasion a little girl stumbles on them talking. She's amazed, no one believes her, and the pets resort to clichés (butt sniffing for dogs).

That's it. Most of the other jokes are dull. The movie becomes so lazy, any action is just meaningless and boring. The movie uses a mix of live action animals, puppetry, and computer animation to bring the pets to life. The CGI mouths attempt to make such absurdity seem real, but who cares when what they say isn't funny or interesting. The 3D wasn't very noticeable at all.

I repeat: This is a CHILDREN'S MOVIE!!

There's a lot of up and down votes on something that really wasn't meant for critically snarky 30-somethings. Get a grip!

The First Movie was interesting because the concept of our pets being part of shadow spy organizations that stayed out of human sight was an eye-opener. Following up on the initial break-out is always an up-hill slog.

This one was Okay. Crazed Cat Villain attempts to take over the world by making all dogs go crazy so humans will put them all into kennels. Both Canine and Feline Organizations get together to prevent disaster. what follows is EASY and ENTERTAINING to a Child. . .

Repeat: 'Entertaining to a Child', not someone's Little Genius who reads the New York Times for Bedtime Stories!

The references and gags put in for the accompanying adults are there to LIGHTLY ENTERTAIN us by eliciting Pun-Groans or soft snickers. They ARE NOT trying to give you a Comedy Central Sidetrack. The Adult is NOT the Target Audience here. If they did that, IT WOULD NOT BE A KID MOVIE ANYMORE!

Personally, I groaned at the Batman/Joker redux of Kitty Galore. Then I smiled at the Dangerous Kitty doing the Silence of the Lambs sendup.

And the rest of the time, I just sat back and enjoyed a rambunctious, Tom & Jerry style action romp simply because I wanted to be entertained by something lighthearted.

And the Pigeon was a Hoot!

Simply put: A good clean Movie for Little Kids that won't put the adult to sleep. Or even if you don't have Kids, and you want something light and silly to watch that doesn't require thought, this is an easy choice. Enough said.

Mary wanted to see it-- her rule is, if it's got a cat in it, she wants to see it. Quick summary: the trailer shows all the good scenes. The first movie had been mildly cute, although forgettable. The highlight of sequel should have been "more really cute dogs and cats." But they decided to put an average (full grown) German Shepherd in the lead (instead of the cute puppy from the first movie), and focused too much on the pigeon (who, admittedly, did get most of the good lines). The supporting cat was good, but had too little screen time. Most of the plot was quotes from other movies, with cats and dogs playing the parts (in particular, the opening title scene was a very well done version of the old James Bond movie title sequences). Except for where it was a direct parody of other movies, the plot was mostly perfunctory, and the denouement was a long and mostly incomprehensible action scene. The 3- D was both irrelevant, and also badly done. See it in 2D. If you see it, do stick through the credits for the final scene.

Cats & Dogs [2]: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (1:22, PG-13, 3-D) — other: talking animals; 3rd string; sequel

I created the "talking animals" subcategory after years of frustration trying to figure out whether to slot things like this under SF, fantasy, or elsewhere. Now no agonizing is required: Anything that involves chatty critters (or cars, babies, vegetables, toys, or other entities that aren't actually capable of speech) just gets dumped here.

There's a general sense that these things tend to be kiddie fare with low production values and even lower IQ expectations. But a review of the 74 such movies since 2000 shows that they aren't much different than SF&F movies in general, coming in with an average rating of 4.92 on my scale of 1-9 (compared to a 4.93 average for the other 474 movies in my database). Some of them have been superb (Bolt, Toy Story 2, Up), and others very good (Charlotte's Web, Finding Nemo, The Golden Compass, a couple of Ice Age movies, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, Toy Story 3, and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit).

At the other end of the scale are the movies that give rise to the stereotype: Garfield, Scooby Doo, Space Chimps, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, VeggieTales, Marmaduke, Rugrats, Furry Vengeance, and 2 wretched excrescences called Yu-Gi-Oh and Tamala 2010.

The original Cats & Dogs (2001) was dead average with a 5 rating. It certainly was not the kind of artistic triumph or blockbuster hit that demanded a sequel, but we got one anyway, this one in (all together now: ooooooo) 3-D, as if that alone justifies its existence. Is it a dog or the cat's meow? (Puns intended; please don't hurt me.)

Well, in the tradition of such things, there are bones thrown (ouch) to the adults, including a lot of smirky allusions to the James Bond oeuvre. 007 fans will recognize that "Kitty Galore" is a pun on Bond girl Pussy Galore (itself a smirking pun on something that will never sneak into a PG movie). There are silhouettes and sultry female vocals under the opening credits. And Bond actor (1973-1985) Roger Moore does one of the voices, for "Tab Lazenby", head of Mousers Enforcing Our World's Safety (MEOWS), reminding old farts like me that the immediate successor to Sean Connery was not Moore but the hapless George Lazenby, about whom nothing has been heard since 1969.

Nor do they stop there. I have to give Writers Ron Friedman and Steve Bencich and Director Brad Peyton credit for working really hard at throwing in a lot of code words, images, and background business designed to appeal to adults. Much of it was pretty clever, including allusions to movies made well before the target audience for this film was even born. But the result is schizophrenic. It's like going to see the Jerry Lewis version of Hamlet and discovering Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud playing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

In the final analysis, tho, do we go to see a movie just for the puns?*

No, we don't, and regrettably the ostensible surface plot of the movie, tho crammed with substance, snappy dialog, and a certain cockeyed coherence, is pretty insipid. Once again, dogs and cats are portrayed as mortal enemies enslaved to their basic natures, except that this time they're required to *gasp* work together to foil the evil machinations of criminal mastermind Kitty Galore, who intends to broadcast a worldwide dog-whistle tone (from a CD helpfully Sharpied with the legend "The Call of the Wild") that will turn her canine nemeses into snarling menaces, thus bringing their doom upon them as an alarmed humanity wipes them all out. There are more twists and turns as well (as I said, no lack of filling), but it's all pretty much of the same caliber.

The voice cast features many B-list names for no discernible reason and to no audible benefit (except for Bette Midler as Kitty), and the visual cast is a bunch of animals trained to assume unnatural positions and have matchmove artists do strange CGI things with their jaws. This is only fitfully effective.

I saw the film in 3-D. The good news is that the main feature was preceded by "Coyote Falls", a 3-minute roadrunner cartoon in a passable imitation of the grand cel-animation tradition, and it used 3-D to marvelous advantage with Wile E.'s latest Acme acquisition, a bungee cord. The bad news is that the 3-D imaging in the movie itself was sloppy, with numerous cases of dogs having doubled snouts, or a patch of fur seeming to float above the surface of the cat it was nominally attached to. This is a movie that didn't care enuf to send the very best.

I do appreciate the attempt to give the adults something to care about, tho, and it was accomplished without having to distract the kids from the story they came to see, so the overall effect is to get a gentleman's D+ from me.

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*Besides, for SF&F fans, they're not even nerd puns.

This belated sequel to the 2001 box-office hit Cats & Dogs is better than I expected. That's not to say it's great, it's not, but there have been far inferior kiddie films I've sat through this year with my four year old (not naming any names... Alvin and Shrek). There's free-flowing action that will entertain the younglings and the animals themselves are cute and/or funny enough to please all audience members, though the plot has more than its fair share of eye-rolling moments and the CGI is poorer than it should be considering the movie's $85m budget.

The gags are hit or miss, however the few that stick are quite amusing. A riff on Silence of the Lambs is hilarious and provides the sole laugh-out-loud scene whilst the Head of M.E.O.W (the feline secret service agency) Tab Lazenby – cheekily voiced by Roger Moore – offers plenty of 007 parodied humour. Elsewhere the talented voice cast do their best to inject energy into the frequently lack-lustre and cheesy script. Marsden is likable as lead mutt Diggs, Nolte is gruff as ever as Alec Baldwin's replacement for the hardened Butch, Applegate brings the sass as Catherine and Midler is clearly having a blast as the malevolent Kitty. Chris O'Donnell fares a lot worse as live-action character Shane, Diggs' loving ex-cop partner, his unabashed mugging an absolute low in his career.

Decent enough viewing with the nippers on a wet weekend.

2.5 out of 5 (1 - Rubbish, 2 - Ordinary, 3 - Good, 4 - Excellent, 5 - Classic)