Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore Director: Brad Peyton.
Starring: James Marsen, Chris O'Donnell, Bette Midler
*
The premise of the original Cats & Dogs may have been pitiful - in the eternal battle of the species, dogs try to save humans from the evil-doing cats, with the help of a secret CIA-style control centre and spy network - but it was a surprisingly funny film.
A tight script, good voice acting and a wonderfully villainous baddie, Mr Tinkles, played by Sean Hayes meant that while it had plenty of slapstick Tom & Jerry-style fun for the kids, there were enough in-jokes and visual gags to keep grown-ups happy, too. The sequel is another matter, relying on a series of juvenile Bond tropes and some slick yet strangely unappealing CGI for its kicks. Certainly little attention is paid to the narrative pace, and where the animals' characters in the original were brilliantly tied to genuine observations of cat and dog behaviour, here they are merely generic, anthropomorphised beyond the point of humour. Unlike the live action and animatronics of the original, the character of Kitty Galore, a hairless Sphynx cat, is almost entirely CGI and the result is quite nasty.
A couple of mildly amusing scenes relieve the horror - the brief reappearance of Mr Tinkles, for example, now in kitty jail on Alcatraz, Hannibal Lecter-style ("The last bird who stood this close to me... well, I enjoyed his company with a plate of Fancy Feast and a nice saucer of milk. F-f-f-fa"). But the highlight of the movie? The closing credits, accompanied by a series of Lolcat videos. You'd be better off going straight to YouTube.
