2010
Director: Brad Peyton
Actors: Bette Midler, Nick Nolte, Chris O'Donnell
Plot: The ongoing war between the canine and feline species is put on hold when they join forces to thwart a rogue cat spy with her own sinister plans for conquest.
The original Cats & Dogs (2001) is a pretty superior movie, and although you don't have much new going on in this sequel, if you found dogs operating overly complicated spy equipment amusing the first time, you are probably going to find it amusing the second time. At least I did. Now that the evil Mr. Tinkles has been locked up, another evil cat, Kitty Galore voiced by Bette Midler, takes the reigns of generally pissing off dogs and people alike. She holds some sort of grudge against both dogs and man but to be honest I think I missed this development during an early movie bathroom break, but the important part is she's got evil plans. The specific plan is to use a satellite to transmit a signal that causes dogs to go crazy. It's not a detail heavy plan but dogs are, as we all know, easily alarmed. This plan is in fact so nefarious that cat agents from MEOWs (due to editing or lack of motivation the acronym was never explained) join forces with the dogs to take down Ms. Galore. Personally I found the portrayal of all cats as dim-witted psychopaths a large part of the original 2001 film's charm, especially the dog training video depicting cats whipping egyptians into making the pyramids. Unfortunately, we are now lead to believe that most cats are good, and although they generally hate dogs, most do not want any harm to come to humans. I missed why dogs going crazy was going to really harm people, or more importantly why humans, cats and most mammals were to be impervious to the insanity-inducing satellite signal. Its almost like they used a formula to make this movie and didn't worry about the details. To be fair I doubt a lot of children watching the movie were wondering how the satellite signal was species specific, and for those adults watching there are movie references thrown in, the most amusing and inappropriate being the Silence of the Lambs type imprisonment of the earlier film's villian, Mr. Tinkles.
Here is a breakdown of the stock jokes that are needed to make a Cats & Dogs movie (ranked in comedic value), if you don't find at least two of these points amusing I'm doubting you'll like either film.
1. Dogs and cats operating outlandish spy equipment such as jet packs, jet cars conveniently located under most dog houses, plastic explosives, james bond style collars etc.
2. Evil cat masterminds forced into degrading/demoralizing outfits by their owners (Mr. Tinkles into a bonnet and Ms. Galore into a bunny costume)
3. Dogs and cats, and in one case a pigeon, speaking with ethnic accents.
4. The fact that dogs have an elaborate secret society to keep humans safe...which they keep secret from humans by pretending to sniff each others butts while having strategy planning sessions.
5. Dogs really hate cats
I should importantly note that I did NOT have the pleasure to view this movie in 3D, and obviously the 9 year gap between the original and this sequel suggests cashing in on the 3D fad was the large motivation for this film. In case you are thinking about skipping Revenge of Kitty Galore, think again, because with the escape of Mr. Tinkles in the final sequence there is likely to be a third Cats & Dogs that intricately builds and elaborates on the complex themes of the earlier two films.
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