Movie review: 'Dog Man' (2025)

Dog Man (trailer) is an 89-minute 3D action-comedy animated film released by DreamWorks in 2025. It was written and directed by Peter Hastings, based on the Dog Man series of children's graphic novels by Dav Pilkey, which are a spin-off from his Captain Underpants books. And because this film is up for a 2025 Ursa Major Award, this seemed like a good opportunity to watch and review it, while the voting period is still open!

Dog Man is an anthro-dog cop, created in a hospital emergency room after an accident critically injures a human cop and his pet dog, saving their lives by fusing them together. Don't think about it too much. He has no tail and communicates entirely by canine sounds. His arch-enemy is an anthro-cat criminal named Petey, who's very fond of creating diabolical machines. The whole thing is happily silly, and remarkably, the trailer doesn't spoil anything!

(Though it does lie. Dog Man can, in fact, play the piano quite well.)

Having never read the source material, I went into this film with zero expectations, only to discover that I did have expectations, just subconscious ones. Understand that this is a film squarely aimed at kids aged 7 to 10. There are little jokes for adults here and there, but I wouldn't say it's deeply engaging for older viewers. What it does have is an extremely frenetic comedy style, and in the end, I enjoyed it. Still, I found it mentally exhausting to keep up with - at first. This is going to take some time to explain, bear with me.

Back in the early 1990s there was a heavily merchandised tv show for pre-schoolers called Barney & Friends. Barney was a guy in a purple dinosaur suit. I'd heard a ton of hatred directed towards it, so I tried watching. Sure, it was annoying, saccharine and stupid - but I wasn't the target audience. What made it work was that no segment lasted more than 90 seconds. The show kept changing directions. It held its young audience in thrall by taking advantage of their short attention spans, giving parents a half-hour of free babysitting.

Dog Man similarly goes in all sorts of crazy directions. The segments last for more than 90 seconds, and thankfully there are points when it slows down. My subconscious expectations revolved around thinking it would have a typical film structure. It doesn't. That's why I was getting mentally exhausted, my adult brain was constantly trying to figure out where it was going. It took me half the running time to accept the film on its own terms, not on mine. Even the ending isn't typical for most films.

Basically, if you're ok with events that go all over the place in rapid succession, and with a story for younger viewers, it's pretty fun. Honestly, it's like a 90-minute cartoon, with a cohesive - if kind of insane - plotline from start to finish. No one breaks into song, and there's barely any toilet humor. Dog Man himself becomes less important as the film goes on, because a couple more characters appear who really get the story rolling. Petey the cat (voiced by Pete Davidson) turns out to have a way more interesting story arc than Dog Man does! My only warning would be if you're sensitive about parental abandonment, this film might press a few buttons.

The voice acting and the music were decent, and the animation is good, having fun with words hanging in mid-air, that sort of thing. Design-wise, the characters are very cartoony and un-detailed because of the comic book art they've been based upon. The film's not making any statements about modern police enforcement, this is classic cops-and-robbers stuff, with both the good guys and the bad guys being very determined goofballs.

Do you need to be familiar with the source material to enjoy the film? I would say no, but it does help. There were one or two things in the film that (to me) came out of nowhere, but after a couple of minutes, context was provided. After I finished watching and started looking it up online, a lot of things clicked into place. It absolutely draws on a ton of things from the original books, and mixes them up into something new. There were apparently a lot of little references and cameos as well, but those went over my head. If you haven't read the books, then you are definitely in for surprises.

How well will it compete in the Ursa Major Awards? Hard to say - it's possible that a lot of folks haven't watched it, since it's aimed at a younger audience. The anthropomorphic content is slightly less prevalent than what you get in The Bad Guys 2, however it makes up for this in sheer silliness. All I can say is that if you watch it, just go with the flow, don't try to predict where it's going. Also don't watch it if you're feeling tired. My brain was burnt out from a bad night's sleep and a long workday, and Dog Man really benefits if it has your full attention. Imdb rates it 6.3 out of 10, which feels unfairly low (I'd give it a 7.5). Rotten Tomatoes gives it 82% / 81%.

Not related to the film, during the opening credits, the DreamWorks sequence zoomed past characters from The Wild Robot, How to Train Your Dragon, Madagascar, The Croods, Puss in Boots, and Shrek. It feels like a lot of these intellectual properties have limited potential in milking them further. Major studios don't like to take risks, and sure enough, a Wild Robot sequel is underway. Still, I think DreamWorks really needs to freshen up its catalog with new material.