"Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" Movie Review (2010)

"Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" 

Movie Review

Directed by Brad Peyton, Written by Rob J. Friedman, Steve Bencich, John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, 83 Minutes, Rated PG

By our guest blogger, Rob Stammitti

If "The Revenge of Kitty Galore," the ill-advised follow-up to the equally ill-advised 2001 film "Cats & Dogs," teaches us anything, it's that there are seriously people in Hollywood who look at an idea like "A dog and cat can talk and act like spies" and think that something about it is inherently funny.

They're wrong.

It's funny in the same way a new, random object might be funny to a baby. They don't understand what they're looking at, so in their confusion, they giggle. It's mindless humor in the most pure sense--it's supposed to be funny because it's supposed to be funny--when the real humor is that millions of dollars were spent to make a dog appear as if its mouth is moving.

The plot doesn't really matter, as the spectacle of animals talking and doing wacky things is the primary focus (kind of like "Baby Geniuses" or "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"), but quite basically it's a mish-mash of various James Bond plot points.

A hairless, fiendish feline by the name of Kitty Galore (obvious Bond reference number one) plots world domination and he's so dangerous that the generally feuding cats and dogs decide to team up (along with various other animals, including mice and pigeons) to take the supervillain down.

The main focuses are Diggs, a German Shepherd, and Catherine, a gray cat. Diggs is the Bond of the film, I suppose, as he's suave, charming and generally quite skilled, but he also goes against orders which occasionally puts his comrades in danger--this fact is actually used several times throughout the film to attempt to create dramatic tension, and the fact that the angst of a dog is played totally straight may be funnier than any of the actual jokes in the film.

Of course, the animals are voiced by plenty of celebrities--James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Neil Patrick Harris, Wallace Shawn and, in one of the more inspired casting choices, Roger Moore, a former Bond who voices a character called Tab Lazenby, himself named after another former Bond actor. One would think the cleverness of the writing might go beyond simply referencing Bond movies outright, but I suppose that would be expecting a bit too much.

It's likely that a great deal of the film's budget went into the special effects, which is baffling considering how poor they are. Giving a dog peanut butter may be a pretty archaic way to make it look like it's talking, but even that would've been better than this. Basically, the animals sit around, completely still, and then their mouths are animated. The result is less amusing or realistic and more weird and creepy. At least with peanut butter, the animals would move around with some sort of personality.

The action is pretty much equally bad, kinetic to the point of confusion at times and banal and boring at others.

Basically, it'll accomplish what parents will probably want it to--it'll entertain (very young) children for a little over an hour. But when movies like "Toy Story 3" and "Despicable Me" are still in theaters, it feels irresponsible to force them to watch stuff like this.

Grade: F

The film's trailer is below. What are your thoughts of the movie?