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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n All January long, I\u2019ve been mentioning (okay, \u201cwhining\u201d) that the month is a dead zone for new movie releases. So it makes sense that the biggest release of the month would be one that opened on the very last day (Friday the 31st<\/sup>) before making most of its money in February. With an estimated $36 million in its first three days, \u201cDog Man\u201d is already the biggest new movie of 2025. And its success isn\u2019t just commercial, the joyful film also gets my first recommendation of the year. It\u2019s a chilly recommendation, appropriate for January I suppose, but a recommendation nonetheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The animated film is a spinoff from the \u201cCaptain Underpants\u201d franchise. Apparently it\u2019s based on a comic book created by the two kid protagonists of that series. Although I\u2019ve never read any of the books or seen the 2017 film, this film does indeed seem like the brainchild of actual children. This is good because the film never loses its childlike sense of wonder or energy. But it\u2019s also a hindrance because the story can sometimes seem like it was thrown together for a school assignment. It was like one of the kids realized at the last minute that their story was nothing but jokes and action, so they halfheartedly threw in some serious moments and a lesson so the teacher wouldn\u2019t take points off for lacking substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story goes that human police officer Knight (Peter Hastings) and his dog partner Greg fail in an attempt to disable a bomb planted by the evil Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson). The resulting explosion destroys Knight\u2019s head and Greg\u2019s body, but thanks to a dubious feat of medical engineering, a singular being with the dog\u2019s head and the human\u2019s body can be salvaged. The resulting Dog Man is a \u201cSupa Cop\u201d with Greg\u2019s smarts and Knight\u2019s physical conditioning \u2013 the best of both worlds. He\u2019s a great boon to the community, much to the chagrin of the unpopular Chief (Lil Rel Howery), but his sights are set on shutting down the villainous Petey for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Petey, irate that he unintentionally just created the best cop in the city, clones himself in an attempt to double his brainpower and productivity, but this too backfires. He does indeed get another version of himself, but as a newborn\u2026 or at least as an adorable young kitten (Lucas Hopkins Calderon) that essentially serves as a son, in need of love and care. Petey isn\u2019t cut out for fatherhood because he\u2019s so evil, and because he doesn\u2019t need a youngster interfering with his plan to resurrect a telekinetic fish (Ricky Gervais) to defeat Dog Man, and because he had a bad relationship with his own father (Stephen Root). Petey has so many problems at once that he winds up stealing the movie from Dog Man, whose need to be a do-gooder following his creation is predictably commonplace and surprisingly dull at times. Though I did get a big laugh out of a heartbroken Dog Man eating big spoonfuls of dog food like it was ice cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately it\u2019s the child character that brings out the best in the adults around him, and in a way that\u2019s the perfect metaphor for this childish movie likely bringing out the best in the adults that watch it (if you can call my low-level recommendation my \u201cbest\u201d). Simply put, even though this movie doesn\u2019t do much for me, it\u2019s practically impossible to dislike. Even though I wish the heartfelt moments weren\u2019t so forced, there were fewer go-nowhere storylines (the Chief practically disappears toward the end of the movie), and the humor was more to my taste (I don\u2019t like jokes about dogs licking things), I just can\u2019t stay mad at a movie this silly and sweet. \u201cDog Man\u201d is less a movie for adults to enjoy and more a movie for them to enjoy how much their kids enjoy it. But I can at least picture how much kids are bound to enjoy it, and that helped me enjoy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDog Man\u201d is rated PG for some action and rude humor. Its running time is 89 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Bob Garver All January long, I\u2019ve been mentioning (okay, \u201cwhining\u201d) that the month is a dead zone for new movie releases. So it makes sense that the biggest… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":60487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60488,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60486\/revisions\/60488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}