As a forgotten memory to many teens, the world of Dog Man is being revived with a new movie, directed by Emmy-winner Peter Hastings.

With a similarity to the books, the movie starts with a cop and his dog getting into a life-threatening accident. To save both their lives, doctors decide to sew the dog’s head to the man’s body, and thus, Dog Man is born (Peter Hastings). Throughout the movie, Dog Man must learn to embrace his new identity and stop supervillain Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson).

The movie is most accurately an ode to the third book, Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties, and does a great job replicating it. From the humour, to the animation, to the plot, and more, Dog Man almost perfectly captures the nostalgic essence of the novels.

The entire concept of Dog Man is quite stupid but expected. The author of the books, Dav Pilkey has also written the popular Captain Underpants, a similarly moronic book.

The stupidity is not necessarily a bad thing though, it’s what gives Dav Pilkey’s books the character that teens know and love. Dog Man is dumb, but that’s what the fans love, and the movie captures that perfectly.

In theaters, the movie got many audible reactions from people, with laughs and “awws “ happening seemingly every minute, mainly caused by the character Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon).

Li’l Petey is the clone of the main antagonist Petey the Cat and adds an adorable and heartwarming aspect to the film.

Originally, Petey the Cat tries to make a clone of himself to take down Dog Man. But something goes wrong and his clone is a child version of himself. Petey is now stuck with his miniature clone and has to take care of him. 

Li’l Petey is a pure-of-heart character and ends up carrying the team to victory by talking to Flippy the Fish (Ricky Gervais) and turning him against evil, and does the same for “Big Petey“.

As for themes, Dog Man shows many of “people can change” as well as “some people don’t change” creating an interesting contrast throughout. 

As for the theme of “people can change”, it simply starts the movie off as classic good vs. evil, and turns evil into good.

On the contrary, showing that some people don’t change, the movie introduces a character, “Big Petey’s” father, known as “Grampa” (Stephen Root). He is introduced as a selfish father who abandoned Petey when he was young. 

Li’l Petey finds “Grampa” to reunite the father and son, but things don’t go well. Petey’s dad shows up, only to find out he is still a horrible father and does not care for Petey. Towards the end of the movie, Li’l Petey and “Big Petey” come home to find “Grampa” gone with all of their stuff. 

The movie emphasizes character development and the transition from bad to good in the movie but still upholds the theme that that transition just can’t happen for everybody.