Director: Peter Hastings

Featured voices: Peter Hastings, Pete Davison, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Lucas Hopkins Calderon, Poppy Liu, Ricky Gervais

The latest from Dreamworks, adapted from Dav Pilkey’s popular series of graphic novels is an unexpected, if occasionally over frantic, treat.

The titular hero’s origin is outlined in the opening sequence as the famed but dim policeman, Officer Knight, replete with Keystone Cops-style uniform, and his dog Greg, the real brains in the duo, race across Ohkay City to diffuse a bomb planted by feline supervillain Petey (Davison).  Alas, they are too late and are severely injured in the subsequent explosion.  At the hospital, surgeons transplant Greg’s head on to Knight’s body, creating a dog-man hybrid, voiced in growls and howls by film’s director, Hastings.

Knight’s girlfriend has left his apartment, so Dog Man moves into the police station. His permanently exasperated Chief (Howery), under pressure from the Mayor to put Petey behind bars, despatches Dog Man to apprehend him. Dog Man catches Petey, but the cat has a habit of springing himself, illustrated in a very amusing montage.

Drawing from the first three books, the picture feels a little cluttered narratively, particularly in the closing stretch, but it’s a likeable combination of surrealist humour; silent movie-style pathos via Petey’s relationship with his clone/’son’ Li’l Petey (Calderon), and Kaiju action, as whole buildings are brought to life and deployed against the city’s citizens. The gag rate is impressive and very grown-up friendly with Petey’s #IQuit generation assistant Butler (Liu) a comic highlight.

The richly textured CGI animation ingeniously mirrors the hand drawn illustrations of the graphic novels with papery speech bubbles occasionally emanating from the characters in moment of excitement, and the closing shot is a clever dig at generic Dreamworks film conclusions.

Dog Man is released 7th February

David Willoughby

Follow David on Bluesky @davidwilloughby.bsky.social