Given that every frame of this flick looks like it’s for 5 year olds playing with Duplo, I had zero interest in it. Until I realized it was a Dreamworks Animation film… so there must be something more to it, right? Then I heard that it has humor aimed directly at adults and it’s kinda charming. So I decide to give it a shot… and I haven’t even seen The Brutalist yet…

The movie is about a cop and his dog who get into a hideous accident that leaves his head effectively dead as well as the dog’s body. So they stitch the dog’s head on the cop’s body. As you do in a children’s film. But now Dog Man (aka Supa Cop) must confront the nefarious forces of the world’s most evil cat.

Let that premise buzz around your brain a bit… try to explain the functional science of a human/canine Frankenstein’s monster to a five year old. But maybe a 5 year old wouldn’t blink while adults jerk back in horror and you get the angle this flick takes.

Does it have humor only the adults will get? It does. That was definitely an Aliens reference… and a Die Hard reference… and who knows what other “fly over their heads” jokes are in this. Not to mention a huge number of absurd random asides that, yeah, I chuckled at.

But the film still looks like it costs ten bucks with its deeply generic and underwhelming art and animation. I bet it looks exactly like the kids book illustrations it’s based on… and, to be fair, it doesn’t look as off-putting as the animated Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies (also based on the illustrations of kid books).

Since I appreciated its randomness and amusing adult jokes, I was settling into a solidly okish score. But then the final act just kept getting dumber and I kept finding it amusing… plus an unearned (but, what the hell, the movie’s for 5 year olds) emotional finale convinced me to give it a bump into good enough. Why not? The movie didn’t chop my dog’s head off and sew it on anyone’s body. It’s cute… it’s stupid, but it’s cute.

Score: 76