The success of Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), based on Dav Pilkey’s book Captain Underpants book series, introduced a new standard for film adaptations of popular media. The film included an intriguing storyline following the book series, an intriguing cast, and a soundtrack complimented by “Weird Al” Yankovic. With all this, it showed how unique film adaptations can make even the most juvenile and ridiculous ideas—albeit made for young children—into entertaining movies, not just for children but for the whole family. Given the Captain Underpants movie’s positive reception, it’s no wonder why, just like for author Pilkey, that the next step for DreamWorks was a new character with a new story to tell: hero cop Dogman.
Dog Man released in theaters on Jan. 31 featuring the titular man/dog crime fighting powerhouse. After suffering damages from an explosion by antagonist Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson), dimwitted officer Knight (Peter Hastings) and his police dog Greg are left with their head and body, respectively, unusable. With the head of Greg and the body of Knight, Dog Man becomes the most popular and loved officer in Ohkay City, much to the annoyance of Chief (Lil Rel Howery). Now Dog Man must take on the evil inventions made by Petey to keep the city from being overrun by chaos, destruction, and bad-doing.
Rather than retelling one particular storyline from the Dog Man book series, the film adaptation instead takes many notable aspects from the first few Dog Man books. This follows an extremely similar structure to the Captain Underpants movie, which includes stories and villains from the first few books in the series. The included aspects in Dog Man specifically include Dog Man’s origins from the first book, the chaos of evil fish Flippy (Ricky Gervais) from the second book, the introduction of Petey’s clone Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon), and much more. Even smaller references to the books can be found as well, ranging from whole stories to little nods. For all the die hard fans of Dog Man and his books, many easter eggs can be found.
The film is cleverly crafted in many aspects. One of the first things the audience may notice about the film is its pacing. In one minute, Dog Man is running through the city, attempting to stop one of Petey’s evil inventions from destroying the city. In another, Dog Man is slowly dragging his feet through the same city, his head down in sadness, as he enters his little doghouse outside the big metropolis. This kind of pacing is rampant throughout the movie, keeping its audience on the edge of their seat, awaiting either action-packed justice or a recovery from emotional turmoil. Some even describe it as “ADHD pacing,” complimented by the fact that the author of the Dog Man book series is open and proud about his ADHD (and dyslexia). The film itself even nods to this; referencing Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties—the third Dog Man book—Petey constructs a transforming robot called the 80-Hexitron Droidformigon, also known as “80-HD.” By the end of the film, all the heart-racing action followed by somber pity makes the movie feel incredibly short despite it being a full-length feature film.
Even the soundtrack adds to the unique crafting of the film. Despite being set in a very cartoonish world, one that is highly stylized and often breaks the fourth wall, the music that plays during intense scenes makes the film seem like an action-packed thriller. Paired with the fact that all of the movie’s ideas and settings are made to be silly, with names like “Ohkay City” and exclamations like “serialously,” it makes the film that much more genius and funny.
In the film’s U.S. & Canada box office debut, the film almost broke its budget’s worth, being just $4 million short of its $40 million budget. This made Dog Man’s debut even better than that of the Captain Underpants movie, which was just over $14 million short of matching its $38 million budget. Given that Captain Underpants grossed over $125 million worldwide, the success of Dog Man in the weeks following its release appears to be clear and positive. If such a trend continues, audiences may even see a “second epic movie” to Captain Underpants, a sequel to Dog Man, or even a film adaptation of another spin-off, like The Adventures of Ook and Gluk. When it comes to Dav Pilkey film adaptations, DreamWorks seems to know what it’s doing.
