DC League of Super-Pets

Voices of: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Kate McKinnon, John Krasinski, Vanessa Bayer, Natasha Lyonne, Diego Luna, Marc Maron, Keanu Reeves, Thomas Middleditch, Ben Schwartz, Olivia Wilde, Jameela Jamil, Jemaine Clement, John Early, Dascha Polanco, Maya Erskine, Yvette Nicole Brown, Daveed Diggs, Alfred Molina, Lena Headey, Keith David, Busy Phillips, Dan Fogler
Directed by: Jared Stern, Sam. J. Levine (co-director)
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure
2022

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: After Superman (John Krasinski) is kidnapped, his loyal dog Krypto (Dwayne Johnson) assembles a team of super-powered pets to try and save the day.

Review:

Tim: I sat down to watch DC League of Super-Pets with my kids and I was fairly excited. It got good reviews from critics, had an incredible voice cast, and should have been fairly entertaining. Unfortunately, this is a fairly bad movie. It has some strengths, but I was vastly underwhelmed by the effort. I'm shocked so many critics enjoyed this movie. My final rating was definitely a bit generous. I guess the movie was okay, but still deeply disappointing.

The idea of a movie about super pets is fine, for an animated children's movie. I can see the appeal of introducing DC's heroes to a younger generation, who will undoubtedly love the idea of super-powered animals. With the right story, you could have a great film. This isn't the right story and it feels close to about the worst you could come up with. The story is a total mess. We get the DC heroes as minor supporting characters- none of them receive enough screen time, so for most young audience members, they may have no idea who Cyborg, Green Lantern, Flash, or others are. You certainly won't learn much about them from this movie. The cast as a whole is overwhelmingly large. Krypto and Ace get the most screen time, but the other characters mostly get shortchanged. None of the characters are especially memorable, outside of the two main leads. The pig was dumb. The little squirrel thing was mostly annoying. The turtle was one of the worst animated characters I've ever seen- seriously, who thought that would be a worthwhile character for a children's movie? I found the main villain guinea pig of whatever to be overwhelmingly annoying. For some reason, we get extra time with a few random villains, mostly just so the entire Justice League would get a pet by the end of the movie. Honestly, I don't even want to go into more detail, the whole affair was just so unbelievably stupid. We have far too many characters on the hero side, and then the script overloads the villain side, too. I get the role of Lex Luthor, but there was other lackey, some random girl that had too large of a role as well. The movie is 1 hour 45 minutes and the cast is far too large. So many of the characters are weak, underdeveloped, and forgettable.

Now, I actually kind of enjoyed the central story of Krypto feeling like his owner was moving on. I think the introduction of new people into a dog's life can be challenging, so it felt like a worthwhile story. It allows us to go deeper on Krypto as a character and understand his motivations and his fears. Making him (SPOILER, as if you care) lose his powers for much of the movie presented a large obstacle that he needed to grow and develop to overcome. I get all that and I appreciate it. To a lesser extent, Ace's story is worthwhile, too. He makes a good contrast to Krypto. I thought their relationship was interesting. That part of the film works more often than it doesn't. That's never the problem- it's all the other characters and dull storylines that eventually overwhelm. I thought Lulu was one of the worst villains I've ever seen in an animated film. Everything about this character was just annoying. I was shocked by how much screen time they received. It bogged the movie down.

The voice cast is a big win for the film, although they mostly felt wasted. I suppose Dwayne Johnson was a good choice as Krypto. It was a little off-putting to hear Johnson voice this particular character, but he has a strong voice and does great work. Kevin Hart was well cast as Ace. He brought his trademark energy and humor to the role and it was fun hearing Johnson and Hart interacting together. Like I said, they together are the highlight of the film. Kate McKinnon has always annoyed me, so it's not surprising that Lulu was insufferable. Much of that is the writing, but McKinnon didn't help. I liked hearing John Krasinski voicing Superman, but his character wasn't very effective. I loved the idea of Keanu Reeves voicing Batman, but I absolutely hated how the character was portrayed. Diego Luna did fine voice work, but his character was rough. Olivia Wilde was serviceable as Lois Lane. Honestly, there's like another dozen actors I should mention, but none of them were especially powerful and their characters were either annoying or underdeveloped.

DC League of Super-Pets is a disappointment of a movie. It throws enough at the screen that younger viewers will be entertained. I did factor that into my rating. My seven year-old and four year-old both enjoyed the film. For me, it was insufferable and boring. It offers up an absolutely garbage story, a throw-everything-and-see-what-sticks approach. In recent years, we've had some great animated movies and we've had a lot of solid, entertaining ones. This film isn't either of those. It's not good.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie