Last year, DreamWorks Animation celebrated its 30th anniversary with two theatrical films that are emblematic of the company’s past and present ever since its acquisition by NBC Universal in 2016. With Kung Fu Panda 4, DreamWorks revived a franchise that represents the movies the studio is best known for: highly referential action-adventure comedies with broad audience appeal and a house style. Enter The Wild Robot, an ambitious project helmed by animation veteran Chris Sanders with an emotionally complex story and a lush watercolor aesthetic.
The Wild Robot has become one of the most critically acclaimed animated movies released by DreamWorks to date, joining the ranks of How to Train Your Dragon and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (which both greatly raised the bar for the studio and Western animation as a whole). Furthermore, the new studio logo speaks for itself: there is enough room for crowd-pleasers and passion projects under the new direction of the company’s brand. So, where does Dog Man, the 50th DreamWorks feature-length animated film, fall under the binary?
Thankfully, under the helm of producer-turned-writer/director Peter Hastings (The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants), this Dog Man adaptation feels like a perfect marriage between the old and the new. This results in an animated movie with both obvious commercial appeal and enough imagination to show off what the storytellers/animators at DreamWorks are capable of. From its vibrant “2.5-D” aesthetic to how the film earnestly plays out its absurdist premise, Dog Man is oozing with charm and childlike wonder.
Dog Man is based on the graphic novel series by beloved children’s author Dav Pilkey, best known for the Captain Underpants franchise. If you have felt a specific “fake movie within a real movie” vibe towards Dog Man, it’s because Pilkey initially created the character as a diegetic comic book written by the protagonists of Captain Underpants, George and Harold. It’s a neat framing device that allows the Dog Man universe to operate entirely on surreal, child logic that can only really be accomplished by the medium of animation. Since 2016, these brief segments were later expanded as thirteen graphic novels that have become a sensation of their own.
Co-written by Peter Hastings and Dav Pilkey, Dog Man adapts the initial premise of the books but takes liberties in pacing the story into a feature-length film. After a near-fatal mission to defeat his archenemy Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson), a police officer and his dog are surgically combined to create the smart, kung-fu fighting “Supa Cop” Dog Man (barks and whimpers provided by director Hastings himself). Dog Man becomes an instant hero of his city, but his life is turned upside down when he’s forced to balance stopping the schemes of the “world’s most evilest cat” and caring for that same orange feline’s abandoned child, Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon).
Sometimes, the script’s humor is especially juvenile, and the plot is surprisingly loose for an animated movie of this genre. However, there is a shocking amount of depth and time dedicated to developing Dog Man and Petey, as the audience watches them truly grow into their new roles as co-parents. What Dog Man doesn’t have in big stakes, it definitely makes up for in non-stop charisma.
The world of Dog Man is based on an extremely crude aesthetic of children’s drawings, featuring exaggerated proportions, jagged lines, and bold colors. The way Peter Hastings and his team have translated Dav Pilkey’s character to screen is visually interesting without trying too hard to emulate the same maximalism of films like Spider-Verse or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which has largely popularized hybrid 2D/3D animation. There might be a justified concern that the technique might become overdone one day, as DreamWorks has had a past of chasing trends, but Dog Man’s animation style takes the right lessons from those movies and crafts an identity of its own.
Though the antics and visuals turn the absurdity to the max, director Peter Hastings grounds the story with a perfect amount of sentimentality. This elevates Dog Man from just being a fun time to a children’s film that is worth seeing in theaters with the family. It is as committed to building an absurdist world as it is imbuing emotional truth into its narrative, and it’s in this way that it can talk directly to its audience about its more complex themes. Petey learns to break the cycle of generational trauma, and Dog Man’s relationship with him also tackles how the world is much more complex than good vs. evil.
A large part of DreamWorks’ legacy as a company was its often competitive and reactionary relationship with the Disney brand (This is how Shrek was born, after all). Ten years ago, it would have been sacrilegious to say that DreamWorks is making better art than Disney. However, if you compare the two companies’ recent output, the division in quality is getting increasingly smaller. After the disappointment of Moana 2, a movie with visual splendor but void of any heart or thematic strength, Dog Man especially feels like another victory for DreamWorks on their winning streak.
The bold zig-zag lines on Petey’s fur and whiskers and the shape of Dog Man’s 2D face are deeply expressive and reinforce the feeling of the movie as a kid’s drawing on a refrigerator brought to life. Yet, these visual aesthetics prove not just to be set dressing but a way to reach out to children on their level and show them that unconventional families are still worthy of love. As a film on its own terms, DreamWorks Animation’s Dog Man is saccharine but has enough sincerity to win adults and children over in equal measure.
Dog Man hits theaters on January 31!
Release Date: January 31, 2025.
Directed by Peter Hastings.
Screenplay by Peter Hastings.
Based on the Dog Man books series by Dav Pilkey.
Produced by Karen Foster.
Executive Producers: Dav Pilkey, Deborah Forte, Caitlin Friedman, Iole Lucchese, David Soren, & Nicholas Stoller.
Main Voice Cast: Pete Davidson, Peter Hastings, Pete Davidson, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Poppy Liu, Stephen Root, Billy Boyd, Ricky Gervais, Luenell, Laraine Newman, Melissa Villaseñor, Cheri Oteri, Kate Micucci, Maggie Wheeler, Pearce Bunting, Max Koch, & Rahnuma Panthaky.
Composer: Tom Howe.
Production Company: DreamWorks Animation.
Distributor: Universal Pictures.
Runtime: 89 minutes.
Rated PG.
