Review of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010) by Chads. — 31 Jul 2010

An announcement made over the PA during German Shephard's orientation is about as funny as anything in Zucker/Abraham/Zucker's "Airplane", the 1980 comedy classic that spoofed "Airport"-type movies, for instance, Jack Smight's "Airport 75", the one with the stewardess flying the plane.

Although "Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" never quite gives "Austin Powers" a run for its money, as far as James Bond send-ups go, this unwarranted sequel is reasonably smart, especially when you consider it's primarily an exercise in talking animals, the most dreaded of all children movie subgenres.

Nevertheless, the film has a brain, albeit a pigeon's brain, the size of a pea, as evidenced by the scene where a cat rides a motorcycle, a cat incognito, lodged inside a human dummy. In a lesser talking animals movie, the filmmaker wouldn't bother to acknowledge how people may react to the miracle of a kitty on two wheels.

At Alcatraz, however, rather than have a cat mimic Hannibal Lecter, in yet another tired "Silence of the Lambs" parody, why not mimic the Zodiac killer instead, since the island prison is off the coast of San Francisco? In this alternative universe, cat and dog technology is clearly ahead of our technology, so the same should be true for canine and feline law enforcement.

The animals could bitch and moan about how David Fincher got it all wrong. As for Kitty Galore(a chi chi voiced superbly by Bette Midler), her plan to turn the humans against the dogs sidesteps her real grudge, which is the humans themselves.

The popular belief that dogs need human companionship more than cats could've been explored, as man's best friend, once again, would have to save the city from the Zodiac killer, a cat. Kitty Galore's hench-cat looks demented enough to play the part, but due to the constraints of a children's movie, the violence is tempered, limited to knives stuck in a stuffed toy, as the chi chi obviously doesn't need her human owner, a magician(played by Jack McBrayer).

"Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" eventually runs out of inspiration(there is the occasional funny line interspersed throughout the otherwise routine screenplay), and resorts to ripping off Barry Sonnenfeld's "Men in Black".