Sunday 20 September 2020

Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite (2020) - Movie Review

 

Time for something a little bit different around here: A talking animal movie that I actually like. The original Cats & Dogs is a real nostalgic gem for me, and I have it (along with Spy Kids) to thank for my spy phase as a kid. I used to think Hollywood spy action was the coolest shit back in the day, and even watching that film recently, it’s not a part of my childhood that I find myself cringing at. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but as a spy genre spoof for kids, it’s held up far better than I ever would have expected.

The same can’t be said for the sequel, Revenge Of Kitty Galore, though. It’s closer to Seltzerberg than it is to the original, with enough animal puns to make me want to use my brain for a scratching post. Between that and how talking animal movies are something of a regular target around here, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting too much from another follow-up. But hey, it’s from the same director as Mighty Oak, and I was surprisingly positive about that, right? Maybe the same thing will happen here.

Well, no. In fact, this is so bad that it actually made me reconsider the second film because this is that much worse. For a start, the humour genuinely made me miss the puns; at least they had a modicum of wit to them, something categorically absent from here. I mean, the main plot is that F.A.R.T., an organisation that maintains the truce between cats and dogs, has to stop an evil plot by a cockatoo named Ralph, who is the head of P.O.O.P. That has got to be the laziest potty humour I’ve ever seen, and it shows a level of abject lack-of-care that I totally expect from Scott Bindley, one of the writers for The Nut Job 2. Except somehow, this is even lazier than that, and we’re just getting started.

As much as I truly dislike Revenge Of Kitty Galore, it at least had the spy action ludicrousness of the original, what with the jetpacks and the Batman and Silence Of The Lambs pastiches and the finale involving a giant satellite. This, by sharp contrast, treats its action scenes the same way Little Foot did; namely, that we don’t actually see any action. All we get are scenes of the animals talking, with the plot about an audio signal that turns cats and dogs against each other spinning in circles like the worst kinds of wannabe spy fiction. It doesn't help that it's basically the same villain scheme as Kitty Galore, just with all the build-up surgically removed with a rusty scalpel.

The effects work to make the animals talk admittedly isn’t that bad (the only aspect that is better than Kitty Galore), but when they aren’t given anything physical to do, whether it’s through CGI, puppetry, or just practical animal stunts, it being competent just feels out of place.

And just in case this comedy spy caper with no jokes and no spy capering doesn’t sound bad enough, wait until we get to the humans. And again, I find myself looking back at Kitty Galore with fondness. Both it and the original kept the focus squarely on the animals, and whenever humans had to be involved, it was usually to do with the main spy plot, like Kitty Galore being a magician’s assistant or Lou’s family working on a cure for dog allergies.

Here, it feels quite a bit like the Disney-lite moments in Mighty Oak, with the main characters Roger the dog and Gwen the cat trying to set up their first-world-problem-drenched humans. Aside from making kid matchmakers look tolerable by comparison, and how the scene of their humans getting stuck in an elevator is basically an extended pee joke, these scenes and subplots just feel like they’re distracting from what should be the main draw of the production.

Then again, part of me doubts that the animals were even needed for what the filmmakers really wanted to say, and believe it or not, it’s here where I truly get pissed off with this thing. With Ralph’s villain plot using mobile and Wi-Fi signals to send his anger bomb, and the humans basically existing as people who need other people to connect with, the film makes a big point of stating that maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time with our screens. Like, it is genuinely patronising just how badly this film wants to get that message across, and how much better it is to talk to people face-to-face and put your damn phones down for five minutes, and good God, who thought this was a good idea to release in 20-freaking-20?

I don’t know what’s worse: A glorified video babysitter telling kids and parents that screens are bad m’kay, or that it’s likely doing so because whipping out your phone to check the socials is a thousand times more entertaining (and less aggravating, no matter what your platform of choice is) than anything the film itself has to offer.

This is absolutely atrocious, even if I tried to grade it on a curve regarding talking animal movies. It’s such a hideous step down that it makes the truly terrible second film look good by comparison, as at least that one had actual action scenes, actual jokes, and an actual plot to string everything together. There is such an utter lack of creativity, or even basic competence, on display here that it makes the film’s haughty diatribes about screens and social interaction more than a little aggravating to sit through. And to make matters even worse, while COVID has delayed films like F9, Spiral, and The King’s Man until next year, this actually made it to cinemas. I know we’re desperate for releases right now, but this is Pup Star levels of unacceptable.

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