Dog Man (dir. Peter Hastings)

by Jack Martin | Feb 7, 2025

Certificate: U

Running Time: 89 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 7 February 2025

WHO’S IN DOG MAN?

Peter Hastings, Pete Davidson, Lucas Hopkins Calderon, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Poppy Liu, Stephen Root, Billy Boyd, Ricky Gervais, Cheri Oteri

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Peter Hastings (director, writer), Karen Foster (producer), Tom Howe (composer), Brian Hopkins (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

After an accident, a cop and his dog companion are brought together in an unexpected way…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON DOG MAN?

I was at just the right age when author Dav Pilkey began his popular children’s book series Captain Underpants back in 1997. My younger self loved reading the increasingly silly stories that Pilkey churned out, and for a while I was also inspired to create my own crudely-drawn comic books just as the series’ imaginative young protagonists do throughout. I was even lenient towards DreamWorks Animation’s 2017 film adaptation, which neatly captured Pilkey’s delightfully immature sense of humour while also standing fairly well as its own entity.

But now, in 2025, I am very much the wrong age for Dog Man, DreamWorks’ new take on another Dav Pilkey property (itself a spin-off of Captain Underpants). Sitting in the cinema, absorbing the extremely wacky visuals and even wackier storytelling, I felt as though I was babysitting a kid who had been fed way too much sugar before their parents bolted out the door, and simply could not keep up with them as they were bouncing off the walls with enough energy to power an entire city for a month. Maybe it’s because I’m now older, but I felt far more exhausted than I should have been by this movie, which while not terrible does leave adult viewers more than a little helpless in the vicinity of a restless and overly bouncy experience for children.

Taking place in Ohkay City, the film begins with Officer Knight and his dog sidekick Greg (both voiced by writer-director Peter Hastings) in pursuit of the “world’s evilest cat” Petey (Pete Davidson), and in the process the duo finds their respective head and body damaged beyond repair. The natural solution is to sew the dog’s head onto the man’s body, thus creating the super-cop Dog Man, whose heroic deeds throughout the city are endlessly covered by local reporter Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher) and praised by the short-tempered police chief (Lil Rel Howery). Meanwhile, Petey attempts numerous schemes to defeat his new nemesis, but in the process creates a younger clone of himself named Lil Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon), whose innocence often overwhelms his father’s inherent evilness and might just be the key for Dog Man to save the day.

If you think the premise is barmy just from reading the above paragraph, imagine how it’s played out in the actual movie. Though, of course, that’s all part of the writing style that Pilkey has become known for, one that feels as though actual children wrote it all (which, according to the book series, it is). Hastings, perhaps a little too well, nails Pilkey’s hyperactive child-like writing voice as his film batters around from one nonsensical plot point to the next, each one more ridiculous than the last whether it’s a cat building an all-purpose robot called 80-HD – an all-too fitting pun for this movie – or a telekinetic fish voiced by Ricky Gervais who makes buildings come to life via the use of “Living Spray”. None of it makes sense, though it was never supposed to, as Hastings recognises the original intent of Pilkey to just lean into the silliness of it all and give the young audience a fun time while they’re reading, or in this case watching, the adventures of a half-man and half-dog cop hybrid.

For older viewers, however, it’s easier to feel tired from the relentless energy it gives off. The movie zooms by at such a speedy pace where it’s near impossible to stop and catch your breath, with the titular hero’s backstory over and done with before even the opening title card pops up, while it constantly throws gag after gag and concept after concept at you without time to catch most of them before they’re gone. The animation also feeds into the sugar-rush feeling of it all, employing a colourful visual style that’s respectfully close to the illustrations in Pilkey’s books, along with the kind of slower frame rate CGI that has been used in a lot of other recent animated ventures from The Peanuts Movie to the Spider-Verse series, though here the choppy movements are less restrained in the more restless sequences, and in some cases make the animation feel as though it’s somehow lagging.

There are some sweet moments, particularly as two certain characters grow a formidable bond while another begins having a change of heart about how they see the world, but ultimately characterisation is much more of an afterthought in Hastings’ script. Dog Man himself feels underutilised in his own movie, to where you start to forget he’s even a presence amidst all the attention being given to the villains (who, unlike Dog Man, can actually talk and thus are able to fully express themselves), and after a while you’re left so exhausted by the constant zip-zap movement and candy-coated colours that you start to wonder if it’s worth caring as much as the younger crowd clearly will. That said, there are at least a few times when even adults can chuckle along with the silly humour, even if it’s just from how absurd some of the gags can get.

In all, I look back on my younger self enjoying reading and being creatively inspired by those Captain Underpants books, and wonder if he would enjoy this movie, which carries a lot of the familiar Pilkey attributes, arguably more than even DreamWorks’ Captain Underpants adaptation. He might, as will plenty of other young kids who, like me back then, are growing up with this wacky and imaginative book series, but sadly he’s long since gone, replaced by a grown man who feels exhausted just from writing this review of Dog Man, let alone actually watching it.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Dog Man is a relentlessly energetic adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s book series that, despite capturing the author’s juvenile writing style and intentionally nonsensical sense of humour, may be too exhausting for viewers over a certain age.