Cats & Dogs (2001)

A great family movie.Improbable? Yes, of course the whole thing's a fantasy, but very well carried out with plenty of humour and it never takes itself too seriously. There's something in this movie for everyone - from juniors to adults - which is probably why it topped the US box office when it opened on Independence Day 2001. It still holds up 10 years later, and is often dragged out for a bit of fun by my family on a wet afternoon. I rated it 8/10.

I wouldn't necessarily call me loving Cats & Dogs a "guilty pleasure" per se, because I don't think it was an awful movie that I happened to really enjoy. I do find it odd, as one friend points out, I hate pretty much the majority of animal-talking movies whether CGI-crammed or simple mouths moving to the lame voiceovers and yet, I throw a curveball and love this movie.Perhaps because it was so damned funny, creative and inventive. Maybe because it was a "versus" movie and they took the lead by telling the audience who to root for instead of alternating between the pros/cons of the different sides. Or, possibly because it was clever – for the animals, using their strengths, weaknesses and limitations to the movie maker's advantage. For example, two of my favorite scenes involve the back-flipping and in the background ninja cats and one dogs paws flying over a keyboard.The film's weakness was, as always, the human counterparts. As much as I like Jeff Goldblum and as much as he tried, he was annoying as crud. (This also applies to the kid (Pollock) and Mom (Perkins.)) I see the dad (Goldblum) as attempting to channel the good ole Doc Brown (Lloyd, from Back to the Future) but failing miserably. No, the real stars were the animals.I liked the majority of the animals, like the already mentioned ninjas but also the Dobermans, including and especially their offspring. Also, Hayes as the main baddie, lead cat, Mr. Tinkles, stole the movie for the most part, though I believe they could've gone a little further. Russian Blue (Ficarra) was a hilarious prelude to Shrek 2's Puss in Boots and had me rolling as did Mr. Tinkles Smithers-wannabe sidekick.The basic plot line is Mr. Tinkles' vision of world domination, a la Brain from the Pinky & the Brain, but he's hunkered down by morons and insufficient "spy" cats. Meanwhile, newcomer and mistaken "spy" dog, Lou (Maguire), needs some encouragement from the neighborhood dogs to protect his master (Goldblum), literally, so he can create an anti-allergic-to-dogs formula for all humans. Throw in life lessons for the boy of the family, who needs to adjust to both a new "replacement" dog and his mostly absent(minded) father.Forget all that. The fun relies in watching what the animals will do, what secret tunnels or high-tech spy gear they're use or the fights (and cleanup) between them. Obviously, there'll be the big showdown where Lou has to be a real hero, but again, we want to see the animals talking and acting like slapstick humans.Highly recommended for kids, families and even adults. Though the sequel's due out soon and I'm not sure after the 9 year wait, the follow-up would match even half of the original's charm, I'll still see it.

I first saw this when it first came out and quite enjoyed it. Now in retrospect I see that it is awful. The visual effects are terrible, the acting is dodgy, the storyline is horribly cheesy, and yet somehow it seemed to work when I first saw it. Maybe it's because as a kid you tend to not care about the visuals, or the acting, and all's you're looking for is a fun story no matter how cheesy it is. It is fairly witty at times after all. This may be true, I think it is fun for kids, but beyond that it is nothing. Worse than that, for older people it is excruciating to watch. But I guess it does its job, if you ignore the wooden acting and cringe worthy storyline.

When I saw the trailer I thought, "that will be a great movie!" I read critics all the time complain about a filmmaker not taking a film to its full potential. I usually don't think that, but I did with this film.It was still fun, but it seems to have been written is such a hurry that they didn't put into it even 10% of what they could have. It's a shame, because now you couldn't do a film with the same premise without coming off as a copy-cat (and dog). I get the feeling that the writer wasn't an animal person. Oh, well, maybe in time this one will be forgotten and someone will re-do it with its full potential.