THE thing about a sequel is it’s got to be at least as good as the original. And if there’s a nine-year gap – a nine years in which the film special effects/animation industry has taken giant strides – then it really does have to be something special.
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore sees the return of many of the heroes of the original film, with a few new characters thrown in for good measure.
Back in 2001 Cats and Dogs was a pretty original, pretty funny film. A film shot using real animals as the stars – and I don’t mean stars in the Lassie or Born Free sense – was, for its time, pretty impressive stuff.
More to the point, it was actually funny.
Nine years on we see Diggs, a failed police dog, recruited as a special dog agent.
But the rise of renegade cat, and former agent, Kitty Galore, means the cats and dogs must do the unthinkable to survive – put aside their prejudices and work together.
Even wheeling out Bette Midler as the voice of Kitty Galore isn’t quite enough.
There’s not enough genuine humour, it’s almost like this film tries too hard to have a complicated spy-based thriller plot rather than accept itself for what it is.
Surely you don’t need to work too hard to make talking secret agent cats and dogs funny. Take any animal, give them a voice, and they just become automatically hilarious. A dog agent should be funny by default.
So why was I not laughing? And I don’t think I was alone, the cinema was hardly full of people rolling in the aisles.
The jokes just weren’t there. The problem with this film wasn’t the plot, it was the script. It missed so many tricks. The trip to Alcatraz where rogue cats were held should have been funnier, there surely must be so many jokes to be had about cats held in the world’s most famous prison?
Our five-year-old daughter enjoyed the 3D short that preceded the film – Coyote Falls featuring Wile E Coyote and Road Runner – far more than she did the film.
The 3D in the film itself was kind of pointless, 3D because they can, not because it adds a great deal to the film.
Don’t get me wrong, Cats and Dogs 2 is far from a terrible film. It’s eminently watchable, entertaining in its way, and the ‘acting’ of the animals is pretty impressive.
I just can’t help feeling it should have been an awful lot better. Worth a watch, the kids will enjoy it, just don’t expect too much...
RATING: 2/5
* Tickets: Cineworld, Shrewsbury