The Dog-father of Bone-Crunching Chaos – and It’s Got Bite!!

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Rarely does a film aimed at primary-schoolers manage to transform a cinema into a zen garden, but DogMan pulls it off with tail-wagging flair. I watched in genuine awe as a packed house of sugar-fuelled children sat, enraptured—no fidgeting, no talking, no rogue popcorn projectiles. If that isn’t the eighth cinematic wonder of the world, I don’t know what is.

Based on Dav Pilkey’s juggernaut book series—a literary staple in the sticky hands of young readers everywhere—DogMan is a bold, bonkers, unrelenting ride through cartoon chaos and canine heroism. The film doesn’t try to double-dip into adult appeal with clever double-entendres or layers of meta-humour (this isn’t Shrek, and it knows it). No, DogMan stays delightfully in its lane, tuned precisely to the frequency of its pint-sized target audience.

And what a frequency that is: somewhere between slapstick symphony and comic-book fever dream.

Director Peter Hastings (of Animaniacs pedigree) brings manic Saturday morning energy to the screen, and the animation style—rambunctiously 2D in a world that’s gone full 3D—is a faithful love letter to Pilkey’s crude, charmingly chaotic illustrations. The aesthetic feels like a child’s notebook come to life... if that child had a direct line to a Hollywood animation budget.

The voice cast is pitch-perfect. Though the film may not toss bones to the adults in the audience via clever quips or hidden references, the performances elevate every line. There's a winking enthusiasm behind each bark, belch, and brawl, and the sound design embraces the madness with gleeful abandon.

What makes DogMan work so well isn’t complexity—it’s commitment. It commits to its silliness, to its characters, to its very specific brand of anarchic charm. It doesn’t slow down to explain itself, and it never underestimates its young audience’s appetite for absurdity. Exploding toilets? Check. Evil cats with robot arms? Naturally. A crime-fighting half-dog, half-cop with a heart of gold and the attention span of a toddler on red cordial? You bet.

In a world increasingly obsessed with making children’s media “for everyone,” DogMan stands out by being unapologetically for kids. And the result? A cinema full of wide-eyed, giggling, silent children—and let’s be honest, that’s worth the price of admission alone.

DogMan is a madcap marvel—a no-holds-barred, tail-wagging treat that delights its audience and doesn’t once stop to sniff its own rear. If you’ve got kids (or the attention span of one), fetch this one immediately.

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