In the proud tradition of Maniac Cop, Theodore Rex, and especially Poochinski, The Country Bears auteur Peter Hastings and Captain Underpants author Dav Pilkey have bestowed yet another unexpected law enforcement officer on pop culture. Dog Man.

The titular hero began life as two creatures, human Officer Knight and his loyal dog Greg (Hastings). The two get trapped in an explosion while chasing malicious feline Petey (Pete Davidson). With Knight’s head no longer functional and Greg’s body similarly D.O.A., the doctors do the natural thing. They follow an inspired notion to put the dog’s head on the man’s body.

Instead of creating a Frankenhooker/Monstro Elisasue entity, this operation results in our titular hero, a kung-fu master who can take down any adversary. The upcycled crime fighter only further enrages Petey, making him more determined than ever to destroy his arch-rival. Among his multiple ill-fated plans to defeat Dog Man is a scheme involving a cloning experiment gone awry. Instead of yielding a malicious Mini Me, the machine produces a sweet adolescent version of the villain, aptly called Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins). Petey and Dog Man are enemies, but Li’l Petey and half-canine, half-man, all-cop may just become best pals.

Dog Man isn’t DreamWorks Animation’s first rodeo adapting Pilkey’s exceedingly wacky books. In 2017, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie brought that tighty-whitey crime-fighter to multiplexes everywhere. Nearly a decade later, writer/director Hastings and company have happily ensured that Dog Man leans even more heavily into the stylized animation of Captain Underpants. For one, the characters in this 2025 kid’s feature move at a slightly lower, choppier frame rate. Additionally, they charmingly look more like protagonists from a Rankin-Bass holiday special than sleek modern CGI-animated movie headliners.

On-screen text for words like “SUPA COP,” meanwhile, appear as if scribbled out of a child’s notebook. Exclamation points run rampant in this world. Stores carry humorously punny names that wouldn’t feel out of place in a vintage Simpsons episode. The animators at Jellyfish Animation excel in making this jagged, zany realm a total visual delight. These are the joys audiences lose when modern animation focuses so much on Mufasa-style realism. Entertainment abounds when buildings, resurrected fish, or wicked cats can look like anything an imagination can conjure.

That sense of energy carries into the pacing. Hastings and editor Brian Hopkins execute Dog Man with a relentless speediness that makes a typical Minions installment look like Apichatpong Weerasethakul directed it. No wonder a robotic character in this carries a name (80HD) evoking ADHD! The film often becomes a blur of noise, especially in a very traditional third act heavily reliant on city-wide destruction. Still, its go-go-go rhythm undoubtedly will appeal to younger audiences. This facet allows it to avoid the stagnancy plaguing so many other animated kid’s movies.  Who on Earth knows why Luck ran 105 interminable minutes or Elemental was just 11 minutes shy of two hours long? Dog Man, meanwhile, doesn’t even last 90 minutes with credits!

Brevity and speed givethe movie a steadier ratio of successful gags than Captain Underpants. That 2017 Pilkey adaptation sometimes lingered on gags like a whoopee cushion choir past the point of exhausting their welcome. Instead, both successful and more middling gags come and go at lightning speed here.

If there’s one quality about Dog Man that puzzled me–a person who adored the endlessly irreverent Captain Underpants books as a kid–it’s how often it tries to wring pathos out of such ludicrously silly material. Some heartfelt moments admittedly do land. Thankfully, Hastings’ script doesn’t overload the characters with didactic shmaltzy dialogue like The LEGO Ninjago Movie’s climax. Nonetheless, its stabs at sentimentality are plenty conventional, a shame in a film that otherwise thrives on wacky unpredictability. It’s strange that such a feature frequently pumps the brakes for plot points involving unresolved daddy issues. Surely, kids will be squirming in their seats during these segments. Compare this to something like Teen Titans Go! to the Movies. That effort keeps its outlandish comedic instincts going even while diving into standard melodramatic material.

However, pathos can’t be wholly blamed for a lengthy climactic fight between Dog Man and sentient buildings. That sequence needed some extra doses of surreal imagination. I kneel before the feet of Pilkey’s comedic sensibilities, and even I found my eyes glazing over during this repetitive finale.

Thankfully, plenty of visuals and ridiculous gags do work quite well. A runner of Dog Man reading a bedtime storybook to Li’l Petey that’s just various pictures of squirrels (which the canine, naturally, barks endlessly at) is some inspired lunacy. Most importantly, youngsters clutching their Dog Man books tight will undoubtedly walk exit this movie grinning ear to ear.  While Hastings’ The Country Bears felt bizarrely out-of-step with 2003 cultural sensibilities, his Dog Man adaptation certainly feels akin to what makes Gen-Alpha giggle. ACAB forever and ever, of course, but Dog Man is still a good (cinematic) boy.

Dog Man curls up in theatres everywhere starting January 31.

Dog Man Trailer: