DC League of Super-Pets (2022)

PG because it apparently scared the living daylights out of my four-year-old.  I thought she would be all over it.  When we all left the theater, we were all talking about our favorite parts and she revealed that the movie was just too scary.  I think she's gotten very comfortable with Paw Patrol so that any actual danger seems horrific.  Also, there's bleeped swearing.  You know exactly what word was bleeped.  I feel a little bad that I laughed at those moments, but they were funny.  Also, Lois and Clark are engaging in pre-marital sex.  It's not like you see it.  It's a kids' movie.  But it is clearly spelled out that she stays over the night.

DIRECTORS: Jared Stern and Sam Levine

I mean, I scream "intimate-knowledge-of-comic-books", right?  I don't know if I'm surprising anyone with that comment.  Even though this blog is named "Literally Anything Movies", I tend to lean harder into genre than other films.  (Okay, I do watch a lot of movies.  But I catch basically every major genre film and superhero movie.)  When I was a kid, the two big comic companies gave a very different vibe than what they present today.  Sure, Batman has been edgy since the late seventies throughout the eighties.  I always considered Marvel to be the heavier of the two companies.  I mean, they had Daredevil, the Punisher, and Moon Knight.  Spider-Man had this whole story where his roommate was on drugs.  (Yeah, I know that Speedy went through the same thing.)  But DC was the home of Superman.  Superman comics, for the most part, were pretty light and optimistic.  Sure, Silver Banshee would show up every so often and that got a little bleak.  But I always thought that DC thrived under a lighter mood.

But the film industry and contemporary comic books (for the most part!) decided to go the other way with it.  DC became the dark and brooding company.  I mean, Superman snaps Zod's neck on screen.  Superman went from being this lighthearted hero of humanity to this struggling alien in a world that hates him.  It's very X-Men of him to deal with that kind of outsider status.  That's what makes me kind of excited to see something like DC League of Super-Pets.  Now, few people will hold this to be hardcord DC.  But I always loved that big time superheroes in the DC Universe had pets.  Yeah, we only get Krypto, Ace, and technically Ch'rrp in this one with some new characters added on.  But DC was the home of Streaky and a flying horse and all kinds of goofy stuff.  It's amazing to me that contemporary DC would even acknowledge this corner of the DCU.  It's just so optimistic.  Sure, I think that there is room for adult-oriented storytelling in the DCU, but sometimes it is fun to just be goofy about animals.  I like that this version of Lex Luthor, voiced by Marc Maron, just wants to destroy Superman.  There's none of that returning autonomy to humanity.  Now, when I read, I kind of like that Lex is three-dimensional, but that's another story.

So as a comic book fan, DC League works so darned well.  It's a return to the camp and goofiness without actually hating the source material.  There's nothing in this film that says that the idea of super-powered animals is goofy.  It's aimed at kids and I can't deny that.  But it almost seems proud that it has this element to the universe.  DC doesn't have to be one thing.  It references the living daylights out of the long history that DC has created and does so lovingly.  There are some liberties taken, to be sure.  In this version, Krypto is in the rocket with baby Kal-El, keeping him company on the long trip to Earth.  But it also gets the essence that these are fundamentally happy characters who view humanity though a positive light.  It's a playfulness that we don't get very often with these kinds of stories.  

But I also have to look at the movie a little bit more objectively.  As much as I like it as a love letter to DC properties long ignored, it is kind of a generic kids movie.  I don't know why I keep feeling this way when I see most non-Disney properties, especially if the animation is computer-generated.  There's something so formulaic about stories like these.  Let's pretend that Krypto and Ace were completely new characters created for a series, like the new Batwheels are offering.  (That might be a bridge too far, by the way.)  The movie does have an Illumination vibe to it.  The jokes are things that we keep seeing in other movies targeted at the same demographic.  Honestly, almost every beat in this movie could be predicted before it happened.  It screams so much formula that it never seems to get great.  And it's not like I'm expecting too much from a kids' movie.  I actually think that it is incredibly difficult to make a kids movie and I would never want to downplay the amount of work and commitment that go into making a movie like this.  But what is challenging about DC Super-Pets?

I'm having a hard time putting the next section into words, so please forgive me.  There was an opportunity to tell the story of finding the role of the hero.  By the end of the film, all of the animals that had gained powers from the orange kryptonite kept those powers.  They find value in their newfound abilities.  But the movie never puts the notion of dependence on abilities on trial.  Krypto loses his powers for the majority of the film.  But with Krypto's lost abilities, there was always going to be a deadline for how long those powers were going to be gone.  To be crass, the amount of time it would take for him to digest the green kryptonite and to pass it is this artificial deadline run through the film.  Ace and the other animals have always been considered worthless to society.  It's when they gain powers that they have value.  They are lauded as heroes.  But the fact that the animals only find themselves in that position by the luck of some cosmic lottery is a bit troubling.  And the fact that Lulu is completely unsympathetic is really weird to me.  Maybe I've been spoiled with the litany of sympathetic villains in the past decade, but what makes Lulu someone to follow as someone more than a villain that wants to destroy?

I also don't love that every problem in this movie can be dealt with by punching it hard.  Sure, the movie talks about the power of unlikely friendship, but what kids' movie doesn't touch on that.  If Batman's power is to be a rich guy who beats up on poor people, who better to represent the lower classes of society than shelter pets who have no one to speak up for them?  I mean, I'm really putting on my armor of injustice for a movie that doesn't really deserve that kind of attention.  But that's what this blog is.  I suppose my big beef is that this movie doesn't really want to take any chances.  Like the Minions movies, this is a movie that loves to just stay in its lane.  And as much as I can enjoy that as popcorn cinema, it doesn't really hit the buttons that I need it to hit.  I need to have commentary that I can talk to my kids about.  The only issues that I really could talk about after this movie was over were about my favorite jokes or scenes.  Art is supposed to push a little harder.  

So as a superhero fan who is about to hit 40, I liked that we had a fun DC movie aimed at kids.  But I really want to DC to go ever further and push that envelope.  Give me a moral or something complex that my kids can unpack.  It's a movie that you can mostly ignore and that bothers me.