'DC League of Super-Pets' - Movie Review

This movie is derivative, juvenile, silly, and occasionally very obvious. But ... it's also damn funny. I'm surprised the formula worked, but a decent amount of heart and quite a few very funny jokes kept me laughing throughout.

The set-up is ... formulaic: Lex Luthor, a new form of Kryptonite (orange), some pets become "super," all members of the Justice League are incapacitated, band of misfit pets must save them. But on the other side of that coin we have the jokes. One of the better ones - not even the best - has the evil Lulu lassoed by Wonder Woman, who says "You cannot escape my Lasso of Truth." Lulu looks her costume over and says "You want the truth? The boots are a little much." Which manages so much in one snarky line: it gives parents a throw-back to "A Few Good Men," it disparages DC's own fashion sense, it's true without being useful, and it's just funny. DC may finally have taken the lesson Pixar started teaching the producers of kids animation years ago: entertain the parents at the same time as you entertain the kids.

The voice staff is astonishing. Let's put it this way, they got Lena Headey and Alfred Molina to do the tiny parts of Superman's parents, and it only gets better from there with the top two roles - the dogs Krypto and Ace - filled by Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart (is it just me, or do they work together a lot? "Central Intelligence," "Jumanji," Jumanji again, and "Hobbs & Shaw"). Hart's character Ace is the emotional centre of the film, supportive without being overly sentimental, and often very funny. Johnson's character Krypto is the lead, and the character who has the biggest emotional journey.

There's a funny running gag about Krypto's favourite toy, a Batman doll that he calls "squeezy-Bruce." As the end of the movie nears, one of the other dogs shows up with a different superhero squeezy toy, paying off the whole sequence beautifully. What's interesting to me is that a lot of animated movies try for this self-referential humour, and it's annoying or un-funny or both, but in this movie it played out perfectly. Just a better quality of writing I guess ...

Having mocked Marvel (and themselves) throughout, they used what's become a standard superhero movie structure in the final credits. The mid-credits scene is kind of meh, but the end-credits scene is a meta-post-modern analysis of anti-heroes that's one of the funniest things in the movie. The dialogue is aimed entirely at adults and yet kids will still laugh at the very physical punchline. All of this while simultaneously giving their own "Black Adam" movie a healthy boost ... beautifully played.