July 5–12, 2001

movies

Cats & Dogs

(recommended)

There’s no reason this cornball-premised movie should work as well as it does, except perhaps that most everyone involved acts as if they’re in on a really big joke. Cats and dogs, headed by a white Persian cat named Mr. Tinkles (voiced by a maniacal Sean Hayes) and a dedicated secret agent dog Butch (Alec Baldwin), are at war. Young beagle pup Lou (Tobey Maguire) is inadvertently assigned to "ground zero," the household where an absent-minded professor (Jeff Goldblum) is developing a cure for human allergies to dogs. Obviously, the cats can’t have this, for it would grant dogs total access to humans, apparently the goal of all pets. There are lots of battle scenes, where the animals deploy tracking devices, Matrix-y martial arts moves and high tech weaponry. But for all this broad action movie satire, the best bits are subtler, like dialogue asides (confronted with a disaster, Butch cries, "Son of my mom!") or the digitized expressions on furry faces. Even the sappy "message" (beagle pups are best suited to play ball with their young masters, in this case, played by Alexander Pollock) is tolerable amid the swirl of snarky self-consciousness.

—Cindy Fuchs