| Fur Will Fly! CATS AND DOGS Release Date: 03/10/01 Certificate: PG Official Website Director: Lawrence Guterman Producers: Andrew Lazar, Chris Defaria, Warren Zide & Craig Perry Screenplay: John Requa & Glenn Ficarra |
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| As De Niro says in Meet In The Parents, dogs are the emotionally shallow pet. Less intelligent than their feline counterparts, they bark and whine all the time, constantly craving attention, and need to be taken out to do their business, then have it picked up. Cats meanwhile, clever enough to do this for themselves and come back again, beat the canines in all departments, none more so than poise and cool. It comes as something of a shock therefore that the makers this feature have unaccountably chosen to portray cats as untrustworthy fiends with Machiavellian designs to take over the world, with dogs as their antithesis, the protectors of mankind. When adventurous puppy Lou (voiced by next years's Spiderman, Tobey Maguire) is accidentally assigned to protect the Brody family, he becomes embroiled in a conflict that swing the dog/cat balance forever. For Professor Brady (Jeff Goldblum) is on the verge of discovering a cure for dog allergy. Lou and a few brave mutts must pit themselves against Blofeld-like evil genius pussy Tinkles (Sean Hayes) and his hench-moggies. |
| If, like me, you were impressed by the trailer for Cats And Dogs, I'm afraid you may be disappointed by the movie. The best things about the trailer were the cats and dogs talking to each other like they were in a Bond movie, performing martial arts and generally running around and fighting. What lets the film down is making the pets too technologically advanced. The amount of hardware they have would make Bond jealous. The opening chase sequence is superb, and the film have should have stayed in the same vein, but instead they have radios, bombs, planes, computers, and a sophisticated headquarters. This all detracts from the novel central premise. |
| As in life, the cat characters are far cooler than the wholesome dogs. Mr. Tinkles is a great bad guy, full of grand ideas, and frustration at being surrounded, like all evil geniuses, by idiots, and by his owner dressing him up in a variety of demeaning outfits ("Evil does not wear a bonnet!"). The Ninja cats and the Russian are also very cool. I'm sure pretty much all kids will like this though, despite the usual cloying obligatory soppy bits; the little boy and his puppy, the little boy and the father who has no time for him etc. It showed a lot more promise in the trailer in terms of appealing to adults though, and quite irresponsibly shows dogs as being better than cats. 5/10. |
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