There is much to be said for the comic potential of warring factions of cats and dogs. Ahem… talking cats and dogs. With super spy gadgets. This is a genius level idea whose time was long overdue when it first came to fruition back in 2001 with the first Cats & Dogs movie. Nine years later, its sequel was also long overdue but incredibly welcome.
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is the next adventure in the hopefully continuing saga of how two species struggle to maintain order with humans through friendship or world domination. You can have one guess at which animal group is which. The cats previously fought under the leadership of the infamous Mr. Tinkles (Sean Hayes) but things have changed. The treacherous and nefarious Kitty Galore (Bette Midler), a rogue hairless sphinx cat, hell-bent on subjugating all people, has taken matters into her own paws but she has revenge against her former feline compatriots as well. The only way for the dogs to thwart her evil plot is to team up with the other cats through a secret agency called MEOWS. To make matters worse, the dogs have just enlisted Diggs (James Marsden), a former K9 police dog who refuses to obey orders and always makes matters worse for it.
It’s probably best to think of this more as a spoof movie or a mash-up than a sequel, but that doesn’t mean that it’s done poorly. Just the opposite, in fact. If director Brad Peyton didn’t have a firm grasp on things then this could easily have come across like the lesser kin of Scary Movie and its ilk. In my book, Kitty Galore is the cream of the crop. What’s even better is that it’s for kids. It’s 82 minutes of pure fun and adventure, making it the perfect diversion on a hot or stormy summer day.
It’s pretty easy to see where they were trying to go as a family-friendly send-up of James Bond films primarily. The movie even starts off with a classic Bond opening with the silhouettes of cats prancing around with Shirley Bassey offering her Goldfinger-styled rendition of Get the Party Started as the theme song. One of the characters is even voiced by former 007 Roger Moore and the bad Kitty Galore has a suggestive name but appears much like Ernst Blofeld, the bald super villain who always had a pet on his lap. Of course, Kitty’s pet is a poor mouse named Scrumptious. Galore naturally likes to make use of unnecessarily slow-moving death traps to dispatch her victims. Other film references to entertain the adults include Lethal Weapon, Men in Black, Batman and The Silence of the Lambs but it’s still full of animal puns and other jokes to keep the kids yukking it up.
Honestly, I loved this movie. It was so short that my son asked why it was over so quickly but, all in all, it did more in its brief time than most longer kids movies do. There was action, intrigue and a whole lot of comedy.
