DC Comics, unlike Marvel, has not been quite so successful at transferring their many characters to the silver screen. That said, the company (and parent company Warner Brothers) seem to be taking a different approach by basically throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. I mean, there’s no rule that says there has to be a shared universe. So, as much as I really dug The Batman and The Suicide Squad, they were both very different movies that almost certainly do not co-exist in some sort of shared universe, and quite frankly, I am absolutely fine with that. Make good movies first, worry about a cinematic universe second if at all. And in the meantime, how about a family friendly movie from Warner Brothers Animation about Superman’s dog?
This is the first of two DC movies this year to feature work from Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, and quite frankly, I think he’s a better pick for a genial talking dog than some kind of anithero. But I’ll see about that once I have seen both movies.
Krypto the Super-Dog (Johnson) has been a constant companion to Kal-El/Superman (John Kransinski) since both were small and placed on a rocket blasting away from the doomed planet Krypton. In the present, Krypto is Superman’s utterly loyal dog. If anything, Krypto is a little too loyal. Superman is about to pop the question to Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde), and Krypto sees her as some sort of competition for the affections of his best friend. Krypto is something of a loner, but maybe he’d do better with a new friend of his own. That may go in a very different direction as Lex Luthor’s (Marc Maron) latest scheme involves bringing some orange kryptonite to Earth in an attempt to give himself superpowers. Superman, with help from the Justice League, prevents that, but it turns out orange kryptonite doesn’t work on humans. It actually works on pets, and a piece lands in the pet shelter Superman and Krypto had briefly visited earlier in the film. There, it gives great telekenetic power to a hairless guinea pig named Lulu (Kate McKinnon), a one time lab animal of Luthor’s. She’ll finish what the man she considers her partner started.
That involves kidnapping Superman and leaving Krypto powerless, but Lulu wasn’t the only animal in that shelter. There was also Wonder Woman fangirl and potbellied pig PB (Vanessa Bayer), who gains the power to change her size; self-conscious squirrel Chip (Diego Luna), who can shoot electicity; very old and largely blind turtle Merton (Natasha Lyonne), who is now superfast; and Ace (Kevin Hart), a very independent-minded dog who gained superstrength and invulnerability. Since Krypto can’t do his usual superpowered stuff, can he get these guys to get their act together long enough to save Superman, the Justice League, and the world as a whole? Especially as Lulu is getting herself a superpowered-pet army?
This one was more or less fine. There are a lot of fairly dumb dog-based puns that come out of Krypto’s mouth, and many of the “better” jokes were in the trailer, but there were very few that I really liked all that much. I wouldn’t call this a bad movie, and it does have some good bits. McKinnon’s Lulu is something of a delight, a guinea pig who gets really offended when you call her a hamster, and there’s a good running gag where she’ll be ranting only to reveal that, to humans, it just sounds like a bunch of meaningless squeaks. And I did get a kick out of Keanu Reeves’s Batman, though I do wonder why when DC stories are done to make their characters more comedic that Batman always ends up being some sort of comedic masterpiece. The animation is OK, the story hits some familiar beats, and while I didn’t dislike the movie, I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again any time soon. If anything, the best bit for me was a post-credit scene that may have been somewhat tying the movie into the upcoming Black Adam.
That said, the movie does have a scene that did not sit well with me. It almost certainly isn’t supposed to sit well with the audience, but I really don’t like what it was about. One of my personal issues is abandoning pets, and it turns out that is a part of the backstory for one of the heroic Super-Pets. The context of the story is done to try and blame the humans involved as little as possible, and given how the story is told, yeah, the reaction of the humans is fairly understandable. But at the same time, it just isn’t right to me. Pet adoption is a responsibility, and if someone adopts a pet, well, it should be for the life of the pet. When my ex-wife and I moved from one state to another for a job, we had two cats, and I made it clear there was no question that they weren’t coming with us. My ex is a cat-lover, so it wasn’t much of a question with her either, but the suggestion did come up once or twice from others. Seeing something like that in a cartoon aimed at kids, well, it bothered me more than it probably was intended to, even if the pet in question got a happy ending when all was said and done.
Grade: C+
0 Comments