Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/16/10
Good movies tend to send
you out of the theater asking questions, about the human condition, the
filmmaker's intentions, or your opinion about the things the story leaves
to your imagination. Bad movies leave you asking other questions:
why didn't it work, why didn't the filmmakers see what was going wrong,
and how would you fix it in their place. Awful movies leave you asking
more basic questions: like what? why? and how?
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore arrives nine years
after the original C&D was a mildly entertaining summer diversion
that hasn't been part of the zeitgeist for about eight and three-quarters
years. So, the obvious litany of whys: why do a sequel?
Why do it now? And why make it such an utterly abominable waste of
time? Why, for that matter, did an impressive roster of voice talent
agree to participate? And why is anybody paying a $2.50-$6.00 surcharge
to see this disaster retrofitted for 3D (I caught it at a drive-in)?
Or you could stick to the basics, watch the credits roll and simply ask,
“What?!?”
Diggs (voice of James Marsden)
is a hotshot K9 police dog who doesn't take orders and ends up being taken
away from his human partner Shane (Chris O'Donnell) and sent to the kennel.
There, he's recruited by canine secret agent Butch (Nick Nolte), sent by
his boss Lou (Neil Patrick Harris) because of Diggs' historic hatred of
cats. It seems that mad cat agent Kitty Galore (Bette Midler) is
threatening to transmit a signal called The Call of the Wild that will
make all dogs Bad and leave mankind without protection from her evil feline
hordes. Diggs and Butch join forces with Catherine (Christina Applegate),
a good guy cat agent (yes, their dueling spy agencies had acronyms, but
you can't possibly expect me to look them up after I went to the trouble
to forget them) and stool pigeon Seamus (Katt Williams) while the clock
ticks down. With no leads, the agents will have to pay a visit to
the most diabolical kitten of them all... Mr. Tinkles (Sean Hayes).
You remember Mr. Tinkles,
right? I hope so, because if not, you're not going to remember anything
about the original Cats & Dogs, nor enjoy anything about its
sequel (although there are a couple of amusing Silence of the Lambs
jokes in his first scene, not that similar gags haven't been done to death
elsewhere). Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
starts with its best and most professional moment, a mildly clever James
Bond-style opening credit sequence with Shirley Bassey singing "Get This
Party Started" while dog and cat-related imagery swirls around the screen.
After that, it's rough sledding, basically a very impressive cast hovering
between slumming and humiliation while cheesy talking dog effects and a
bunch of badly animated cats (they're kinda hideous, to be honest) exchange
dog/cat jokes that were lame cliches in the golden age of vaudeville.
What worked about the original
C&D was the way Mr. Tinkles and his cat & mouse henchmen
had the delusions of grandeur to want to rule the world, but were at heart
just goofy pets, struggling to make the technology they needed work and
generally being klutzy and cute. The original wasn't so willing to
have fun with dogs, who were depicted as idealized saints, but the sequel
just doesn't have any sense at all of what pets are really like.
If you replaced the talking pets with talking babies, you'd just have to
swap out lame baby jokes for lame dog ones and otherwise nothing about
the plot or dialog would change. Even Mr. Tinkles lacks invention
this time around, simply filling in the plot blanks and not looking anywhere
near as cute as he did the last time around (although the vision of him
in the Hannibal Lecter mask is good for a laugh).
The vocal actors are more
than a little overqualified and do nothing to bring their crappy roles
to life. Middler certainly gives Kitty Galore her all, and Wallace
Shawn puts a lot of enthusiasm into one of the henchcats, but the likes
of Nolte (who's never sunk lower) and Roger Moore should never get within
a mile of this sort of thing and seem to know it. Harris could also
stand to internalize that fact that you don't have to accept every single
job you're offered. At least the voice actors were just working from
the comfort of a studio for a couple hours: their human counterparts
shame themselves in the extreme. Chris O'Donnell received a Golden
Globe nomination for Scent of a Woman and is the star of one of
the top 5 network TV shows, but if you'd never seen him before, you'd think
he was an athlete or musician who'd never acted before. His every
line reading is painfully arch, delivered through an ever-present grin
that suggests he's acting at gunpoint. And Jack McBrayer, as the
magician who takes in Kitty without knowing about her evil plans, recalls
the sort of children's entertainer you walk by as quickly as possible at
a county fair.
Sure, little kids will probably
get a kick out of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,
but they'd also get a kick out of running around yelling “grrrrr”
for 75 minutes, and at least that would burn some calories. If there
isn't a better kid's movie playing where you are, you need to get back
in the car and keep driving. Unless you have a family member in Cats
& Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, there's just no reason
you should ever see it. And if that family member is Chris O'Donnell,
you still shouldn't go.
Have I made my point? |
