Cats and Dogs - The Filthy Critic

This week:
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Filthy says:
"What a fuckinghateful piece of shit."

You may be wondering why I'm reviewing a shitty movie that came out like eight weeks ago. There's a good reason. No, make that a fucking great reason. A hilarious story behind it full of sex, intrigue and quite a bit of illegal activity. It's only available to subscribers of Filthy Extreme, though. That's my new $200-a-year premium subscription service. Filthy Extreme is also where I put all my nude photos and the reviews without typos. It's only available to cool people, so if you haven't heard about it, it's probably because... you know. You can try Googling it, but it only shows up in the secret Google for cool people. Depending on who you are, you may not find it. If that's you, all the explanation I can give you is that Cats and Dogs: the Revenge of Kitty Galore was playing for $2.50 at the second-run theater, and the proprietors let you sit in the kiddy movies after you get kicked out of the R-rated ones.

Here's my review for you uncool cheapskates: Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is a fucking train wreck, and not two freight trains full of TVs and milk crashing into each other. It's two of those Indian commuter trains with thousands of people hanging on the sides and roof, slamming into each other, disembodied limbs and heads bouncing about like blood-spurting bingo balls. It's getting your dick pierced in prison, by someone's teeth. It's the armpit of a Juggalo after a two-week meth bender. It's the nadir of moviemaking as art.

Cats and Dogs 2, the sequel nobody wanted, is a pile of horseshit about how cats and dogs are secret agents and must band together to stop a rogue cat that wants to blow up the world. It's supposed to be a kids' movie chock-a-block with incredibly lame, tired James Bond references. They are references adults have seen a million times before and kids won't get because, unbeknownst to the movie's makers, six-year-olds don't watch Bond flicks. Piled on top like the cherry pit on a dogshit sundae is a very long, unfunny Silence of the Lambs parody. I guess the movie's target audience is unsupervised kids or the children of drug addicts who are allowed to watch anything they want. Hell, why not a porn parody, too?

Moviemaking should always be art. It should always be done by people who have something to say, a great idea of how to say it, and the passionate support of the people helping put it together. Every fucking time. There are enough people and there is enough passion for storytelling in the world that the grassfuckers in Hollywood should never hand the keys to the dream machine to the assholes who produce crap like this.

I'm not calling Cats and Dogs crap because it's poorly made or loaded with mistakes. Although, it's about the sloppiest, worst script I've heard this year, and a story loaded with bad animal CGI and third-rate actors doing third-rate shitty acting. The reason I call it crap is because I can't fathom a single person involved in its production who gave a nun's left tit. Not from the indifferent voice work turned in by Nick Nolte, Neil Patrick Harris, Kat Williams and James Marsden. Not from the live actors like Chris O'Donnell (no, he isn't dead) and a cringe-inducing slab of gelatinous ham named Jack McBrayer who is trying to make his living doing a community-theater version of a gay Jon Heder. McBrayer performs like he's needs desperately to please some inner demon that hates subtlety and humor.

For some of the people involved Cats and Dogs 2 was an easy paycheck. Show up for a couple of days, read a few lines in a silly voice and then cash the check. For them, I guess, they either don't give a rip about the quality of the product, or they assume they're too fucking stupid to know if it'll be good or not. They just take any job and figure some smarter person is working to make it good. They are lazy cowards.

For others, this is the only work they can get. Like O'Donnell playing a tough-guy cop in a vintage Mustang. First of all, it's lame miscasting to put a guy as milquetoast as this in such a stereotypical tough-guy part. It smells more like the movie's budget limitations than an effort to get the right actor. Second, it's a shitty part in a shitty movie. There is no way O'Donnell, as starved for work as he probably is, could have read the script and said, "This is what I want to be remembered for. This is why I went into acting." It takes backbone to turn down lousy movies, and he apparently has none. Maybe hundreds of actors turned this funeral pyre of a movie down, but the people in it did not. They took it, because they fucking hate the audience. They couldn't care less whether we get our money's worth or get a transcendent experience. They just want their God damn paycheck.

I've railed against indifference before, the way those pricks in L.A. take their golden ticket to make movies and wipe their asses with it. I've ranted about how the system is set up to let dumbasses with no new ideas but a good sense of what will safely make money are allowed to run the machine. It still boggles my mind, though. I can't understand why we let assholes who hate us sell such generic pablum. Movies could be wonderful. Movies could be magic. They often are. There are people out there with the ability to make that so. The cowards and assholes just need to move out of the way and give them a chance.

One Finger for Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. It's a slap in the face by greedy assholes. And don't forget to sign up for my new $200 a year subscription service, Filthy Extreme. But only if you're cool.

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