The entire movie revolves around the main character, Dog-Man. Set in the Captain Underpants universe, it is loosely based on the Dog Man comics by David Murray ‘Dav’ Pilkey Jr. In the movie, loyal but clueless Officer Knight and his loyal and intelligent dog Greg are seen chasing a famous cat burglar, named Petey the Cat. Petey narrowly avoids arrest but leaves behind a bomb for the cop duo to find. When they are unable to diffuse it in time, the bomb explodes and causes a serious accident which leads to Officer Knight having a severe head injury and Greg having serious damage on his body. In a totally realistic and harebrained scheme, the doctor and nurse on duty decide to sew Greg’s head onto Officer Knight’s body, thereby creating a dog-human hybrid known as Dog Man.
The movie is such a fun watch, as it’s not taking itself too seriously.
The movie develops into how Dog Man learns to accept his new identity, while getting involved in a cat-and-mouse chase with Petey, who keeps escaping from jail everytime he gets arrested. Dog Man learns to face realities of his life, and battles loneliness when post accident, he is left without a home and a girlfriend, and is forced to move into a dog house at the edge of the city. The movie continues with Petey coming up with Doofenshmirtz-like solutions to destroy Dog Man (Petey is my new icon), including buying a cloning machine and creating a baby clone of himself by accident, called Li’l Petey. Petey concocts another scheme to destroy Dog Man by trying to bring an evil fish named Flippy to life, whom he programs to destroy all do gooders.
In standard antihero style, his scheme goes sideways due to a series of hilarious incidents that lead to Flippy coming to life, but the “Living Spray” factory (yes, it exists) also coming to life with him, along with a series of other buildings in a Transformer-like fashion. The buildings go on an obvious rampage through the city, which the whole movie culminates with Petey and Dog Man joining forces to take Petey down, only to be trumped by Li’l Petey, who saves everyone with the power of sheer innocence and friendship.
The movie is such a fun watch, as it’s not taking itself too seriously. The animation style is reminiscent of the comics, and the movie is full of fourth wall breaks that make it very funny due to the obvious and not-so-obvious situational and peripheral comedic cues. With references to many famous movies, including Die Hard, this kid’s movie helps you enjoy a lighter side of cinema. The script writing is very well done, with witty dialogues, incredible set-up, and seriously hilarious scenes that take you right back to nostalgic childhood cartoon shows. The movie gives much thought to giving proper character arcs to all the characters and actually addresses many grown-up themes like childhood abandonment, discrimination, dealing with grief, etc. Dog Man is an exceptional watch, and I recommend everyone to go see it, as it’s “supa” awesome.