Now that the film has moved from film to DVD to Blu-ray one must wonder how the effects survived the transition.
If you’re not familiar with the film it revolves around a pup named Lou (Tobey Maguire) that finds his way into the home of a scientist named Professor Brody (Jeff Goldbum). Brody is working on a way to cure dog allergy and bring the dogs back into the homes of millions of people. Trying to stop Brody’s experiment is a group of cats led by Mr. Tinkles (Sean Hayes) who want nothing more than to keep humans allergic to dogs and, more importantly, rule the roost. Lou is recruited by a group of top-secret dogs to keep Brody’s experiment alive and kicking until it is perfected and mass produced.
Cats & Dogs is a simple film. It’s young enough to entertain the kids in your household and it’s got enough mature content (not in that way!) to keep adults happy. I think the adults in your household will probably appreciate the cast more than the kids, so that always helps sell the movie a bit more for the older audience. Voices include Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Joe Pantoliano, Jon Lovits and Michael Clarke Duncan. Let’s not forget the late great Charlton Heston as the lead mutt The Mastiff, who does a superb job leading the cat troops. What’s amazing is that all the cast members bought into their roles, especially Sean Hayes. Hayes plays a scary Mr. Tinkles. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to look one of those squished-faced cats in the eyes without thinking of the maniacal cackle of Hayes’ character (pure evil!).
This is the type of comedy and film you would expect from a movie geared towards kids. My kids watched it twice before returning to Kiki’s Delivery Service, so I know they took to it well. The story is simple, but it’s fun. It’s sprinkled with mild comedy and a ton of physical comedy. The fight scenes that you get are well animated and, yes I’m going to say this, even intense in some cases (see the Russian cat fight for details).
Now, the only caveat for this film would have to be the violence. If you’re one of those parents that needs to control the violence on television in fear of your kids repeating it then you may want to steer clear of it. There is a tremendous amount of animated fighting in it. While it is hilarious to see ninja cats kicking the crud out of dogs, it can be a bit much (especially when the Russian cat shows up).
Anyway, this film is fun and it’s entertaining. You have to go into it knowing what to expect.
Let’s talk about the Blu-ray conversion. The upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray (analog to HD) was good for the film. It’s not the best set of visuals that I’ve seen on a Blu-ray and certainly not the worst. It looks good in HD and there are grains of artifacts here and there. The real test of the HD upgrade resides in the animation. I’m split down the middle on this one, as the animation looks sharp in some instances and looks really fake in others. I’m not a enormous fan of replacing humans/dogs with animated alter egos, but for this time period (2001) it worked really well. For 2010, it works well half the time. The dogs jump into animated ‘fake’ mode too well when the animated fight scenes begin. For example, when the ninja cats land and start fighting Lou, the cats look fine, but Lou looks too animated. When he gets hit or is in fighting stance it almost looks too ‘animated’. The Matrix Reloaded (and the other one after it) had the same issue. When you got too close to the characters during fight scenes they looked way too fake. Blu-ray doesn’t help to alleviate this issue; it just magnifies it.
Other than this, the visuals were sharp and the audio was darn good.
As for the features, you get some good stuff. You get some really fun and great commentary from director Lawrence Guterman, Producer Chris DeFaria and Production Designer James Bissell. They give some great insight about what happened during the production with cast and crew. They also give you sort of a different view about what they intended on doing and what happened during production. Commentary is a great way to get just a little bit more from the production and they don’t disappoint.
As for the five featurettes, the HBO First Look is a bit of what you would expect. It does provide some interesting views on what they were doing onset, but nothing too detailed. The other featurettes are pretty darn good and they’ll interest your family, especially the Mr. Tinkles Speech.
Finally, wrapping up the Blu-ray features are the storyboard comparisons and the concept sketches. Call me old, but I want more than that. Those two features shouldn’t count as they were neat on DVDs in the late 90s, but they’ve worn out their welcome in home entertainment.