Cats & Dogs

Review - The idea, that the struggle between cats and dogs is reaching DefCon 1 actually appeals to me.  I've been looking forward to Cats & Dogs for a few months.  Far to be long to be let down so hard.  Poor acting, a horrible story, and complete senselessness slobber dripping off the screen right into your lap.

The story concerns a scientist (Jeff Goldblum) whose searching for a cure to dog-related allergies.  If successful, it's conceivable that there could be a dog in every household.  A devastating possibility to all of catkind.

My biggest problems with the story concern the animals' 'humanity' and their lack of equality.  First of all these are not animals at all.  They don't think or act like animals.  Everything they do and think has been humanized.  When my wife and I talked about it later we determined that the film should have gotten in the psyche of the animals.  Understood their desires, concerns, or wants and injected that into the film.  It sounded so horribly corny to us that we thought that would make the film better, but it would have. Anything less human would have helped.

The second problem had to do with the equality shared by the animals.  The dogs are portrayed as technologically superior.  The veritable CIA.  They've got gadgets and gizmos and dogs running the Matrix from inside a glass garbage can.  It's ridiculous.  In contrast the cats are portrayed as a SPECTRE (James Bond) type band of beings.  Apparently all under the control of one long white haired cat, Mr. Tinkles, whose hell bent on world domination. Ultimately it's not a cat person's movie.

The acting was so horrible that even Alec Baldwin couldn't save it. Charlton Heston, Sean Hayes, Susan Sarandon, Tobey Maquire, Joe Pantolino, Jon Lovitz, Elizabeth Perkins.  Good talent but poorly used.

Rent it some day for your kids so you can go next door and shovel dog crap with your neighbor over a few beers and enjoy a little God-given animal reality.

-m-