Dog Man (2025)

​Rated PG for some potty humor.  I'm sure I couldn't label all the slightly childish parts, but at one point, they crawl out of a robot's butt.  Where was this humor when I was a child?  I can imagine the scorn and derision that my parents would have had watching this movie with me as a child.  There's also some lightly scary parts in the sense that there are bad guys that threaten to destroy everything.  And maybe it's just me, but there's a light subtext to the role of life that I couldn't get out of my head when it came to the death of the police officer.  Like, the vibe I get is that Dog Man is mostly dog and very little human.

DIRECTOR: Peter Hastings

I'm breaking my own rules again.  I'm not proud of that.  I'm even less proud of why I have to break the rules.  When Kung Fu Panda 4 came out, I took my kids to see it in Boston.  I was exhausted from walking around all day and could not care even a little bit about Kung Fu Panda 4, especially considering that I hadn't seen most of the franchise.  So I fell asleep.  I didn't mean to fall asleep.  But since I hadn't seen most of the movie, I didn't write a blog on it.  After all, there was a big chunk that I had left out of the movie.  I mean, that's fair.  It would be weird to write about a movie that I hadn't seen all of.  But the bad part was, keeping that in mind, I intentionally fell asleep for Dog Man.

I didn't want to see it!  I wanted to go see Captain America: Brave New World.  But I had my entire family so I suggested that we go see Dog Man.  The weather was trash and everyone was getting antsy.  It's just that I didn't want to write about Dog Man.  But let's be honest.  I may have fallen asleep for ten minutes.  I got the gist of Dog Man.  So even though I'm going to be a bit rough, I'm going to write about it.  If you think my read of this movie is way off, I don't have a leg to stand on.  For all I know, those ten minutes were a make-or-break foundation for the movie.  But here's the deal: I'm glad that my kids like Dog Man.  But do you know the other truth?  Dog Man is not for me.

That's been my take on a lot of the movies that I've taken my kids to. And can I tell you what?  I'm glad that Dog Man didn't sell out to me.  I taken a peek at my son's books on Dog Man and I don't find very much entertaining about it.  But he finds them hilarious and he can't wait to get the next book.  That's enough for it to warm itself up to me.  There was this major push to make kids' movies for adults to enjoy as well.  Were there a couple of chuckles in the movie for me?  Oh, absolutely.  The Laser Pointer Store is one of those running gags that I couldn't wait to come back.  But most of the movie is about as chaotic as could be.  With Dog Man, there is this intentional push to go as absurd as possible.  It's not like the production of the movie dismissed the content as something beneath it.  The most meta moment for me in the entire movie was that every actor was actually crushing the performances, despite the things that they were saying were beyond asinine.  

But let's make this bleak.  After all, I'm overwhelmed with how many blogs I have to write this weekend.  Mind as well take this wholesome family film and unpack something that absolutely should stay in the box.  First of all, Pete Davidson?  Really good job.  I mentioned that, for such a silly film, the actors are all crushing it?  No one does a stronger job in this movie than Pete Davidson as Petey.  My son wondered why they jumped all over the Dog Man canon to make one movie, skipping stuff like the Fleas.  (I have a general idea what he's talking about, but without having read these books, I don't know how right or wrong he is.)  My argument was that the emotional core of Dog Man wasn't in the protagonist, but in its antagonist.  Petey is probably the most dynamic character in the series, being the only one who is actually confronted with the possibility of change.  (Okay, sure, a cop and a dog are fused together to make a new character.  How is that not change?  Shut up.) But Petey's relationship to L'il Petey and his father are the meat of the story.  That explanation didn't help my ten-year-old who wanted book accurate movies.  I told him that the fleas might show up in potential sequels.  That also didn't satisfy him.  He's going to be one of those book purists.  

But it's also horrifying that Pete Davidson is playing Petey.  (I just realized that they have the same name, which only makes this realization all the more horrifying.)  Pete Davidson's been through it.  I know that he tends to make gossip headlines.  I don't care about all that.  He can date whomever he likes.  It's his life.  If he finds happiness with people, that's good for him. He deserves happiness.  But Pete Davidson as Petey spends most of the movie dealing with father issues.  Petey's a garbage father for the majority of the film.  Part of that reaction comes from the fact that he believes that he was born evil.  L'il Petey (and THIS IS THE PART I WAS ASLEEP FOR!) is actually a clone that Petey makes because he has a hard time relating to people around him, causing them to not listen to him.  But throughout the course of the story, through L'il Petey being an inherently good person, he realizes that his misdeeds and desire to do evil come not from biology, but because he had no paternal role model.  With the case of Petey, he was raised by L'il Petey's Grandpa, who uses people and abandons them when he gets what he wants.  But L'il Petey doesn't have the same issue.  As angry as Petey gets, L'il Petey recognizes that Petey stuck around.  Now, Pete Davidson didn't have an abuse or toxic parent.  He had a dad who died as a firefighter in 9/11.  Yup, this children's story blog is going to talk about the lasting impact of 9/11 on human psychology.  I won't even talk about the buildings that come tumbling down in the city.  That would be in poor taste. (Honestly!  I opened that door, but like?  Poor taste.)  

Pete Davidson's doing all these lines about the value of having a father around and how it is hard for him to be a good person.  This is a guy who struggles putting all of this into a character that is a cat who wants to destroy Dog Man.  I mean, someone on the set had to be talking to him about this.  I almost have to say that Pete Davidson was probably cast to play Petey because of his traumatic past and how that spiraled out into his life.  Davidson has kind of gotten this reputation for being this bad boy.  Again, I tend not to follow gossip columns nor do I know what his relationships with other people.  I listened to a very old podcast with Pete Holmes where Davidson talked for a while.  He seemed like a nice guy who carried a heavy load.  If I'm way off on his moral compass, then I retract a lot of that...along with the ten minutes I fell asleep for.  But Davidson is saddled with this notion that he can't be good because of the company he keeps.  He has issues with a father who couldn't be in his life.  Golly, you then stuck him in a cartoon aimed for real little kids and told him to emote the same thing into the character?  I feel like we're exploiting this poor guy.  

I feel weird recapping my whole take.  The Pete Davidson thing is a lot.  But the thing about Dog Man, for those on the fence, is that the movie is best tuned out.  I don't think it is a good movie for anyone over a certain age or who did not grow up with this.  But it is hitting a lot of the same buttons that Dav Pilkey's other project, Captain Underpants, is doing.  It's courageously not played to me.  It's played to the kids, who lost their minds about absurd the movie was.  It's a powerhouse for kids; it's nothing for me.  (Outside of the amazing performances?)