DOG MAN (2024)

Yes — and you'll likely enjoy it more than you expect. Dog Man is a wacky, funny, exciting comedy that also has something to say: love changes people, even villains, and doing good makes you happier than doing evil ever could. That's not a small thing for a cartoon to pull off, and this one pulls it off with heart.

The catch is mild but real. There's a lot of cartoon violence and peril — a car chase, an exploding bomb, a villain who threatens a little kitten. None of it is graphic, but younger or more sensitive children might find it intense.

For older children through adults, this is an easy, joyful watch with a moral spine. For the very young, go in knowing the peril is played for laughs but is still peril.

Officer Knight and his loyal dog, Greg, are badly hurt chasing the supervillain Petey the Cat. A doctor's solution: graft Greg's head onto Knight's body. Dog Man is born — the department's newest top cop, forever trying to impress the chief while doggedly chasing Petey, who always seems to escape.

Petey's newest scheme is cloning himself into a kitten sidekick, Li'l Petey — but the plan doesn't go quite the way the supervillain expects.

Four stars means this one delivers on every front it's trying to hit. The comedy is genuinely wacky and funny, the action is exciting, and the story lands its emotional beats — the touching moments actually touch. The character of Li'l Petey is singled out as adorable enough to melt hearts, and the film uses his innocence as the engine of its whole story: his love is what starts changing both hero and villain.

It's a well-built kids' comedy that doesn't coast on gags alone — it has a shape, a heart, and a payoff that earns the setup.

Dog Man exalts something rare in a wacky cartoon: real, costly love that changes people for the better. Petey the Cat starts the film as a villain determined to "destroy all do gooders," but the innocent love of the kitten he creates begins to soften him. By the end, he's learning that being a "do gooder" makes people happier — including himself — and he discovers the satisfaction of being a good father. Dog Man, too, finds a new family to love. This is a story where love transforms both heroes and villains, and where doing good brings order out of chaos.

The film doesn't shy away from why Petey became who he is — he was mistreated by others and grew to hate them, and his own father abandoned him as a child. Rather than excusing his villainy, the film uses that wound as the very thing love and family ultimately heal.

This is an unusually redemptive premise for a kids' comedy, and it maps closely onto a biblical truth: that love has the power to turn hardened hearts. As Scripture puts it, "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Dog Man tells a smaller, cartoon version of that same story — love received becomes love given, and even a villain can be redeemed by it.

Dog Man is that rare kids' comedy that's both wacky fun and genuinely redemptive — love changes the villain, family heals the wound, and doing good turns out to be its own reward. Our answer: worth the trip — best for older children and up. Little ones may need you nearby for the peril, but everyone else can enjoy this one together.