I know I’m not a kid but I thought Dog Man (2025) was pretty good. It was released on January 31, 2025 in theaters and has a running time of 89 minutes. The movie is based on the graphic novel series by children’s author Dav Pilkey. Dav Pilkey is most well known for his Captain Underpants series, which also got a movie and animated series of its own. The movie was animated by DreamWorks who is most well known for their Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon Series’. It was directed by Peter Hastings and produced by Karen Foster.
The cast is pretty good, there isn’t any casting that leaves me questioning. The list of voice actors contains Pete Davidson, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Lucas Hopkins Calderon, and Ricky Gervais. Other important names are Brian Hopkins for editing, Scott Cullen for cinematography and Tom Howe for music. The film had a budget of $40 million and grossed $145.6 million in the box office.
The plot follows Dog Man trying to stop his arch nemesis, Petey the cat after a bomb blew up the two individuals that created Dog Man. Petey continues to break out of prison and try to defeat Dog Man. After an assistant crisis, Petey decides to clone himself not knowing his clone will end up as a child, this results in Lil Petey. After some frustration Petey decides to abandon Lil Petey, who finds his way into Dog Man’s hands. Petey sees Dog Man and Lil Petey and decides to take him back. After some time one of Petey’s plans comes to life and threatens Lil Petey’s life, this causes Dog Man and Petey to team up to save Lil Petey and the city.
Something I like about this movie is that it references a lot of the gags in the books. Still I think the Captain Underpants movie was better than this one, which makes me a little angry because a Dog Man sequel is in the works while Captain Underpants only got a low quality show. Still this movie is a good 4/5 to me, it’s a good family film and even better if you read the books.
