Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Over the past few years, one of the most irritating, infuriating, hairball-inducing subgenres of cinema has been the Live-Action Talking Animals Kiddie Pic. Movies like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and last summer's G-Force have been more closely related to an impending apocalypse than to actual movies. So when I say that Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is a significant improvement upon its recent predecessors, the comment may sound like the very definition of faint praise. But this cutesy flick really is, well, kind of watchable.

Again, that's not the most glowing recommendation, but it still beats dancing Chihuahuas and farting guinea pigs. No contest. The Revenge of Kitty Galore may be a pretty average movie overall, but it's practically a brilliant masterpiece compared to the obnoxious nonsense that has lately paraded before my eyes under the guise of this seemingly harmless subgenre. Unlike its Live-Action Talking Animals Kiddie Pic cousins, The Revenge of Kitty Galore wisely focuses almost entirely on the talking animals and keeps the awkward overacting by the fleshy people to a minimum.

Too often do these movies introduce a pile of human characters who are utterly annoying and used merely as expositional pawns in the progression of the plot. They steal away the spotlight from the real stars (those wacky talking animals) and usually just get in the way of the corny comedy. Even the first Cats & Dogs, released back in 2001, was guilty of paying too much attention to the human co-stars. But The Revenge of Kitty Galore is absolutely covered in pet hair from top to bottom, leaving the people almost entirely on the narrative sidelines.

That means we get a lot more lovable pets and a lot less Chris O'Donnell, which is always a good thing. O'Donnell, desperately toying with the few final scraps of his acting career, is the closest thing to a human lead in this movie. He plays a cop whose well-meaning police dog Diggs (voiced by James Marsden) makes one too many decisions on his own and is finally separated from his partner and tossed in a cage. Diggs becomes the protagonist of the story, the new recruit invited to join other secret agent dogs in the ongoing war against cats.

O'Donnell's character soon starts wondering where Diggs has gone and grows increasingly worried about him. But that's as far as his arc is allowed to travel. There's very little to it and he only has a handful of minutes of screen time with which to earn his paycheque. Beyond that and a few other humans who have a line or two, this movie is cats and dogs all the way through. The sheer fun of watching so many canine and feline creatures mark their paw prints all over the frame with barely a human to be found is part of this movie's passable charm.

It's simple and it should be obvious, but this approach to the Live-Action Talking Animals Kiddie Pic appears to be quite alien to filmmakers working within this genre, so it's nice to see that screenwriters Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich and director Brad Peyton have stuck to the title and delivered what the premise promises. The decision to give the cats and dogs the majority of available screentime (it's not a lot, considering the movie runs for a mere 82 minutes) is especially merciless, considering the people cast are O'Donnell and an incredibly annoying Jack McBrayer, whose regular home on 30 Rock is better suited to his clueless shtick.

As is the norm with these movies, the people are unpleasant, to say the least. G-Force even boasted the great Bill Nighy in a villainous role and I was still eyeing up the Exit sign in the theatre. These movies tend to drain the talent from human performers not voicing furry creatures, so you can probably imagine the level of acting quality The Revenge of Kitty Galore has to offer with Chris O'Donnell wandering around.

But with the narrative driven mainly by cats and dogs, this flick is a fun little movie that respects its pint-sized target audience enough to give them what they want. It also gives us adults a few things to chew on, too. Since this series is about spy dogs with high-tech gadgets facing off against spy cats with high-tech gadgets, the potential for spy movie parody has always been present. The first Cats & Dogs flirted with the possibility, but this sequel ups the spoof quotient at every turn.

The name of the titular villain (a cat whose accidental fall into a vat of hair removal led to banishment from its home and a subsequent revenge plot to take over the world) is a blatant nod to one of the most famous Bond girls of all time. Some dialogue also pays tribute to famous Bond lines, while a secret agent cat working alongside the dogs is named Tad Lazenby, a name that is meant to reference one-time Bond player George Lazenby. That the secret agent cat is also voiced by seven-time Bond performer Roger Moore is yet another homage to the famous franchise.

These references and jokes are pretty basic stuff in the grand scheme of movie parodies, but I appreciate that Friedman, Bencich, and Peyton all recognized the importance of exploring the spy silliness in more detail than was done in the first movie. Other movies end up being parodied as well, including The Silence of the Lambs, which provides this movie with one of its most enjoyably wacky scenes. The jokes keep flying at us (the movie is presented in 3D, after all) and it's especially comforting that very few of them are of the scatological variety. If you're looking for flatulent pets, this sequel may disappoint. But don't worry, because I'm sure there's an available copy of G-Force in some nearby DVD bargain bin.

Not all Live-Action Talking Animals Kiddie Pics are made equal. Some bite, some bark, and some others just roll over and play dead. But Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore actually has a pulse and there's a gentle, authentic wit flowing through its silly veins that should make the movie fun for kids and easily digestible for adults. It's not great or brilliant or particularly original, but this entertaining little flick does represent a step in the right direction for the lately troubled subgenre. It sticks to the title and doesn't waste much time on the pasty people. It's cute, likable, and even a bit funny. Knowing that there's a new Live-Action Talking Animals Kiddie Pic out there that isn't painful to sit through and obnoxious to its core makes me almost, sort of, just slightly want to bark for joy.