Cats & Dogs

(2001) dir. Lawrence Guterman
viewed: 02/18/06

Believe it or not, though I did rent this for my son to watch, I chose this film and had harbored a vague desire to see this since it was initially released. I, of course, didn’t rent this one for myself, wholly for myself, but in the end, I ended up laughing at it a lot more than my son did.

That’s not to say it was good. It’s in this weird category, for me, of these digitally “animated talking-animal/baby” films that are so bizarre in concept that they could almost be listed under surrealism. Certainly a naif Surrealism, but still, it’s pretty bizarre stuff. In this case, cats and dogs are mortal enemies and have secret spy organizations battling it out over the eons. Cats are the bad guys and dogs are man’s best-friends, in more ways than traditionally held.

My son is still young, 4 1/2 at this point, and still gets a bit lost in convoluted narratives. Things that may not seem so convoluted by an older person might really not be comprehensible by him. I spend a lot of time explaining things like “Why are the mice all going out into the town covered with green foam?” Well, the answer is that “The cats have sprayed a potion on them that will make all humans allergic to all dogs and that the mice are in collusion with the cats.” See, it’s not so easy, is it? But I thought it was particularly funny that the cats were going to give Australia to the mice as a reward for their efforts once the cats had taken control of the world.

It’s just bizarre and oddly funny. This is one of those bad movies that is kind of fun. It’s not funny because it’s so bad, it’s just funny. Again, I don’t feel like there are too many people out there who will read this and hazard a chance to ever see this movie, so I am not warning people off or recommending it overly. It’s low brow. I liked it…to an extent.