Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews
Cats and Dogs
2001
Lawrence Guterman
Village Roadshow Pictures
Prologue
There are some ideas that are truly brilliant, in both the scientific and media world. The toaster, Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, H.G. Well’s The Time Machine, eating meat, the wheel. However, many of them also bring up a big question. WHY DID NO ONE THINK OF THIS BEFORE?
I mean, 2001? THAT’S how long it took for someone to make a film about cats fighting dogs? I still don’t believe it, somebody MUST have done this kind of thing before. Toy Story wasn’t the first film about toys coming to life, so surely someone could’ve put two and two together and said ‘I’ve got the best idea for a kid’s film EVER!!!’ However, sometimes, when you have a unique idea, there’s a reason nobody’s thought of it before. I remember loving this film when I was a kid, but the thing is that it didn’t get a particularly good write up. Also, I remember really liking the little known Disney’s Action Game series, but besides A Bug’s Life they were horrible. So, am I just being a nostalgic weirdo, or is there really something in Cats and Dogs? Let us observe.
Plot
Our film opens with the montage of American suburbia you’ve seen in every single family film made in the nineties. It even has a jaunty combination of flutes and violas for the soundtrack. Jesus Christ, compared to this Vanilla Ice was black. So we start off with a crazed dog chasing a cat like mental. The chase is insanely cartoony, with dogs shaking their heads with that ‘walla walla walla walla’ sound effect, incredibly fake looking trees that bend if something the weight of a feather lands on it, fifties housewives with large apple pies and dogs smacking themselves on glass doors they thought were open before sliding down slowly. At the end of the chase scene, the bloodhound nearly gets the cat, before being kidnapped by a van with the license plate ‘CATZRUL’ on it. Hmm, I wonder if the director wants the dogs to win.
Now we are introduced to our first main character, a Shepard dog by the name of Butch, who goes into a hi-tech kennel that has technology James Bond would call unnecessary. He tells Dog Command that ‘Buddy’ has been catnapped. OH NO! What ever will we do without BUDDY!!! AAARRRGGGHHH! So, over the credits sequence we are narrated by the chief of Dog Command that Buddy was working on ‘the Brody case’ and though he is safe (how does he know?) he needs to be replaced as soon as possible, and that this is the work of a rogue feline cell (24, the domestic edition!). Apparently, the future of man and dog alike depends on ‘The Brody’s’ and, believe it or not, this scene is played with a completely straight face. Remember, the montage is of dogs swapping bones and getting onto planes. CATS AND DOGS! THE MOST DRAMATIC MOTION PICTURE OF THE DECADE!
Rob Stoakes Reviews
Cats and Dogs
2001
Lawrence Guterman
Village Roadshow Pictures
Prologue
There are some ideas that are truly brilliant, in both the scientific and media world. The toaster, Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, H.G. Well’s The Time Machine, eating meat, the wheel. However, many of them also bring up a big question. WHY DID NO ONE THINK OF THIS BEFORE?
I mean, 2001? THAT’S how long it took for someone to make a film about cats fighting dogs? I still don’t believe it, somebody MUST have done this kind of thing before. Toy Story wasn’t the first film about toys coming to life, so surely someone could’ve put two and two together and said ‘I’ve got the best idea for a kid’s film EVER!!!’ However, sometimes, when you have a unique idea, there’s a reason nobody’s thought of it before. I remember loving this film when I was a kid, but the thing is that it didn’t get a particularly good write up. Also, I remember really liking the little known Disney’s Action Game series, but besides A Bug’s Life they were horrible. So, am I just being a nostalgic weirdo, or is there really something in Cats and Dogs? Let us observe.
Plot
Our film opens with the montage of American suburbia you’ve seen in every single family film made in the nineties. It even has a jaunty combination of flutes and violas for the soundtrack. Jesus Christ, compared to this Vanilla Ice was black. So we start off with a crazed dog chasing a cat like mental. The chase is insanely cartoony, with dogs shaking their heads with that ‘walla walla walla walla’ sound effect, incredibly fake looking trees that bend if something the weight of a feather lands on it, fifties housewives with large apple pies and dogs smacking themselves on glass doors they thought were open before sliding down slowly. At the end of the chase scene, the bloodhound nearly gets the cat, before being kidnapped by a van with the license plate ‘CATZRUL’ on it. Hmm, I wonder if the director wants the dogs to win.
Now we are introduced to our first main character, a Shepard dog by the name of Butch, who goes into a hi-tech kennel that has technology James Bond would call unnecessary. He tells Dog Command that ‘Buddy’ has been catnapped. OH NO! What ever will we do without BUDDY!!! AAARRRGGGHHH! So, over the credits sequence we are narrated by the chief of Dog Command that Buddy was working on ‘the Brody case’ and though he is safe (how does he know?) he needs to be replaced as soon as possible, and that this is the work of a rogue feline cell (24, the domestic edition!). Apparently, the future of man and dog alike depends on ‘The Brody’s’ and, believe it or not, this scene is played with a completely straight face. Remember, the montage is of dogs swapping bones and getting onto planes. CATS AND DOGS! THE MOST DRAMATIC MOTION PICTURE OF THE DECADE!
In all fairness, I didn't take that film too seriously either
We then cut to meet our main character Lou, a Beagle played by Tobey Maguire of Spiderman fame. He dreams of freedom outside of the barn he lives in, desperate for adventure, and attempts to escape with a complete lack of success. He gets berated by his peers, which just goes to show that Tobey Maguire was playing Peter Parker before the Spiderman movies were even made. However, his peers are told to go with a large Doberman, who replaces them all with a crack unit of Doberman puppy agents. We then meet one of the Brody’s, played by Elizabeth Perkins, who adopts Lou over the others. UH OH! I SEE A HIJINKS A COMING!
So then we meet Scotty, Mrs Brody’s son, whose name suits a dog more than the actual dogs in this movie, but whatever. He’s not impressed by Lou, because Lou isn’t Buddy. Then we meet Mr Brody played by Jeff Goldblum AAARRRGGGHHH!!! MY EYES!!!
Ok, it’s easy to make Jeff Goldblum jokes so I’ll try to keep them to a minimum. He’s got an allergy to dogs that he is attempting to find a cure for. It’s an odd plot point, but hey, this is actually an interesting idea for research. It’s probably impossible, but hey, we could apply this kind of research to other allergies, like nuts or fish! This could save lives! We could even use the reverse! Topple oppressive dictatorships because they didn’t know that they couldn’t eat salmon! Annihilate armies by giving them allergies to peanuts and contaminating their water with peanuts! WE COULD DOMINATE THE WORLD! I COULD DOMINATE THE WORLD! I WOULD BE A GOD! I…
… I…
Oh yeah, the review.
It’s Dirty Harry!
So Scotty puts Lou out for a short while, and Lou sees a biscuit float down on a balloon, but Butch saves him from the explosion, as this was a trap. Butch starts babbling at Lou about his training and introducing him to his team, Peak the tech wizard, Sam a ninja sheepdog (stop laughing). However, Butch quickly realises that Lou hasn’t a clue as to what anyone is talking about, though it talks him longer than should’ve done, seeing as Lou often says ‘Sorry, but what is all this?’ I think Johnny English could’ve worked that out sooner than this moron.
Now we meet our villain, Mr Tinkles, Blofeld’s cat, who says nothing, does nothing, and really just walks about for five minutes until stopping. NEXT SCENE!
Actually, for that, we’ll have to wait for a while, because, like almost every movie I’ve reviewed so far, the plot just stops for fifteen minutes. Why is it that every single movie I watch has a beginning and an end but just forgets to have middle? The film suddenly becomes a series of random encounters in a fucking video game. You know when family movies in the early 2000’s would try to structure themselves by going ‘Beginning, nothing, action, nothing, nothing, action, nothing, action, ending’ or some variation of? It was to make video games easier to make. So, here’s a counter for boss battles throughout this movie, because there is a fight with ninja cats that doesn’t really have any purpose other than a boss battle.
BOSS BATTLE: 1
So Scotty goes to some football (or as Mrs Brody pronounces it “SOCK-errrr”) trials, and it’s revealed that he is absolutely shit at it. However, this allows Lou and Scotty bond, and we meet Ivy, an old flame of Butch who’s supposed to be a femme fatale, but whatever. Then we see Mr Tinkles, who is around for a minute to tell his servant to ‘send in the Russian’.
BOSS BATTLE: 2
A Russian Blue to be exact, a cute little kitten with a typical KGB voice who leaves me begging that he was voiced by Rudger Hueur. He wasn’t and he sounds nothing like him, but he should do. This guy manages to use fake dog poop concealed in a hairball to trick Mrs Brody into thinking that Lou shat on the carpet. I don’t believe that, though, it’s hard for me to swallow HONK HONK!
So, the lab door that contains the dog allergen is covered in plastic explosives that the Russian sets to explode. He then notices that Lou and Butch are in the house, and begins to rip the houses, and them, to shreds. However, the bomb is stopped, and the Russian is interrogated by Command with little success.
So, Lou and Scotty are bonding and playing football and generally having gun (kidnapping in 10, 9, 8…) when they accidentally go into Mr Brody’s lab, and their football smashes many glasses and spills all the juices into one another. Mr Brody’s comes back to find that the cure is completely ruined... or at least it should be, considering that the whole thing was completely smashed to pieces, but in fact, the cure now works. SCIENCE!
Mr Tinkles overhears that the cure is working, so he decides that now is the time for action. It is revealed that his comatose master is the CEO of a fake snow factory (bwuh?), and he uses his master to get into the factory, (with cats driving a limousine, no less. Why is this film taking itself seriously?) and fires all the employees, converting the building into his new base of operations. He then devises the next step of his plans, kidnapping the Brody’s and sending a ransom tape to Lou and Butch. The price for their release? The research! Gee, I wonder if he really will let them go.
So, once again, the plot stops for about ten minutes. We get five minutes of them wandering around Dog Headquarters and another ten of Lou and Butch going “We should save them.” “No we shouldn’t.” “Yes we should.” “No we shouldn’t.” Regardless of what anyone says, Lou takes the research to Mr Tinkles and, what a surprise, Lou gets swindled and beaten up. WELL WHAT A SURPRISE!!! It’s almost as if the evil cat owned by Ernst Blofeld was… LYING! Mr Tinkles reveals his plan, though, to inverse the formula and make everyone allergic to dogs. Hey, that’s my plan! It doesn’t matter, though, because Ivy has a tracking device on the limo.
OK, just one question… HOW IN THE NAME OF POSEIDON’S BEARD DID SHE GET THE TRACKING DEVICE ON THE LIMO?!?! SHE WAS BACK AT LOU’S HOUSE WHEN HE WENT TO RENDEZVOUS, SO DID SHE TELEPORT? DID THE LIMO PASS THE HOUSE?! WHAT HAPPENED?! TELL ME THE TRUTH!
So Mr Tinkles reveals to the Brody’s that he is a cat, and that his plan is to use mice to spread the allergen all over the world. He also tests his own formula on Scotty, making him allergic to dogs, before leaving them to die in a fire, along with his despised servant Calico.
However, his plan is thwarted by the dogs, and though he fights back…
BOSS BATTLE: 3
… he is defeated and dogs and humans are safe once again from the cat menace. Because apparently, all cats are scumbags! OWN A DOG AND ONLY A DOG! HATE CATS! BURN YOUR CATS!!! ARGH!!!
As you might guess, I’m a cat person.
Acting/Characters
So, the acting in this movie. Hmmm…
… give me a minute…
… huh.
It’s not bad, certainly. It’s just not good either. The actors play their parts adequately, with Alec Baldwin’s Butch being the typical jaded professional tasked with training naïve rookie Tobey Maguire, and they both do alright. Then there’s Scotty, and while not particularly brilliant, it’s good to see a kid in a family film who doesn’t act like the typical kid in a family film. He starts out kind of whiny but he keeps under control and only ever whines once or twice, he’s not very good at sport but doesn’t let it really bother him and he’s actually a half decent actor. Otherwise, pretty damn forgettable… besides Sean Hayes as Mr Tinkles, the villain, and this guy is AWESOME!!!
However, his plan is thwarted by the dogs, and though he fights back…
BOSS BATTLE: 3
… he is defeated and dogs and humans are safe once again from the cat menace. Because apparently, all cats are scumbags! OWN A DOG AND ONLY A DOG! HATE CATS! BURN YOUR CATS!!! ARGH!!!
As you might guess, I’m a cat person.
Acting/Characters
So, the acting in this movie. Hmmm…
… give me a minute…
… huh.
It’s not bad, certainly. It’s just not good either. The actors play their parts adequately, with Alec Baldwin’s Butch being the typical jaded professional tasked with training naïve rookie Tobey Maguire, and they both do alright. Then there’s Scotty, and while not particularly brilliant, it’s good to see a kid in a family film who doesn’t act like the typical kid in a family film. He starts out kind of whiny but he keeps under control and only ever whines once or twice, he’s not very good at sport but doesn’t let it really bother him and he’s actually a half decent actor. Otherwise, pretty damn forgettable… besides Sean Hayes as Mr Tinkles, the villain, and this guy is AWESOME!!!
Sean Hayes is best known as Jack in Will and Grace, and his comedy roots shine through here. Despite the jokes themselves not being particularly funny (more on that later) this guy still had me in stitches, and yet still came across as a legitimate threat. I mean, ok, the plan was stupid, but he’s actually a good villain, smart, barely seen, mysterious, quite clearly insane and sadistic. By far his best moment is the ransom tape, because it’s bloody funny and yet still feels sends shivers down kid’s spines with his very real threat to kill the family if the research isn’t brought to him. One criticism, though – Blofeld’s voice, as in, he should’ve done a Blofeld impression. Come on, it was on a plate, Mr Hayes. Get on the ball!
Animation
Hurr hurr hurr, are you shitting me?
OK, so this was one of the earliest attempts to make convincingly real animation, and does it show or what! They apparently made the cats and dogs speak with three methods; just filming them, used for scenes were they would move realistically and you wouldn’t really see their mouths, puppets, for when they only had to move a small amount but unlike really cats or dogs, and CGI, for talking and crazy movement. And, well, it’s not seamless.
The puppets? Wibble wibble wabble wabble STIFF JERK sums it up nicely. And as for the CGI… well, they aren’t animated badly, but the humans in the original Toy Story were more convincing than these 3D models. The Looney Tunes in their live action films fitted in better than them. It’s animated well, and the models are incredibly detailed, but it’s the modelling that falls apart for this film. You can immediately tell the difference from a cat and a green ball on a stick.
Other Notes
So, the main two attractions of this film are comedy and action. The comedy can be summed up in a word. Crap. Besides Mr Tinkles’ dialogue, most of the jokes consist of dogs doing things dogs normally do, but repeatedly saying ‘make sure the humans don’t notice the bomb’. There’s also a tiresome collection of action movie tropes being enacted by animals, such as Matrix Bullet Time, pulling angry faces and ninja fighting. This film doesn’t quite understand the difference between parody and copying, a lesson that Seltzerburg seems to have also ignored in homage to this film.
Speaking of fighting, the action in this film is actually pretty good, which may sound strange after all the bashing I gave over the animation. The animation is very fluid, and this allows for some very creative fight scenes. A particular highpoint is the fight with the Russian Blue kitten, which is brilliant simply for the cathartic mess that ensues. Or even the CAThartic mess that ensues, HONK HONK HONK!
Oww.... my credibilityFinal Word
So, this film has its ups and downs. It’s not incredibly funny but it’s got some really good action scenes, the heroes are one-dimensional but the villain is awesome. I could even recommend it for kids, and their parents should get a chuckle out of it. But the question that I wanted to answer was, did it hold up? Was it as good as I remember? Was it the glorious fleece of god that I did once worship?
In all honesty, no.
It wasn’t bad. I’ll give that. It is actually quite fun, but man was I disappointed. Maybe this is something just for children, but I was seemingly blinded. Maybe it was because there wasn’t anything like it at the time, where CGI was trying to fit in with live-action seamlessly, but it just falls short. Maybe it belonged in that time period that it inhabited. Vanilla Ice belonged to the early nineties. The Carry On Columbus film taught us all that we should keep Carry On films in the fifties to seventies and no later. Cats and Dogs is probably the best film I’ve reviewed so far, but it just doesn’t belong in the futuristic world of 2010 (or whenever you’re reading this). So what did they do?
They made a sequel, that’s what. Nine years later.
Silly silly film industry.
Nothing from me for the next two weeks. Apologies.
So, this film has its ups and downs. It’s not incredibly funny but it’s got some really good action scenes, the heroes are one-dimensional but the villain is awesome. I could even recommend it for kids, and their parents should get a chuckle out of it. But the question that I wanted to answer was, did it hold up? Was it as good as I remember? Was it the glorious fleece of god that I did once worship?
In all honesty, no.
It wasn’t bad. I’ll give that. It is actually quite fun, but man was I disappointed. Maybe this is something just for children, but I was seemingly blinded. Maybe it was because there wasn’t anything like it at the time, where CGI was trying to fit in with live-action seamlessly, but it just falls short. Maybe it belonged in that time period that it inhabited. Vanilla Ice belonged to the early nineties. The Carry On Columbus film taught us all that we should keep Carry On films in the fifties to seventies and no later. Cats and Dogs is probably the best film I’ve reviewed so far, but it just doesn’t belong in the futuristic world of 2010 (or whenever you’re reading this). So what did they do?
They made a sequel, that’s what. Nine years later.
Silly silly film industry.
Nothing from me for the next two weeks. Apologies.
