It’s hard to watch any animated, semi-self-referential, family friendly, based-on-a-DC-property comedy without immediately thinking of “The LEGO Batman Movie.” It might seem unfair to do so, and maybe it is. But as the only other theatrically released animated DC film, and one that was animated by the same studio as “League of Super-Pets”, its hard not to. But even without that comparison, “Super-Pets” flaws would be plain to see, if not particularly egregious or damning.
Following Krypto the Super-Dog, voiced by Dwayne Johnson (“Jungle Cruise,” “Moana”), the film follows his attempts to rescue Superman, voiced by John Krasinski (“The Office,” “A Quiet Place”), and the rest of the Justice League after their capture by the maniacal guinea pig Lulu, voiced by Kate McKinnon (“The Spy Who Dumped Me,” “Saturday Night Live”). He teams up with a group of shelter pets who find themselves with newly acquired superpowers; Ace the dog, voiced by Kevin Hart (“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” “The Secret Life of Pets”), PB the pig, voiced by Vanessa Bayer (“Saturday Night Live,” “Trainwreck”), Merton the turtle, voiced by Natasha Lyonne (“But I’m A Cheerleader,” “Russian Doll”), and Chip the squirrel, voiced by Diego Luna (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Narcos: Mexico”).
It's hard to call any of the vocal performances good, but they certainly aren’t bad either. Johnson is clearly enthusiastic in his super role, McKinnon might not be doing a lot of acting besides an “evil” accent but she’s clearly having fun, and even Hart puts a bit of gruffness into his normal speaking voice for the role. Nobody is bad, but the best performances in the film are the blink and you’ll miss it ones. Krasinski’s Superman feels like the best version of the character since the 90s animated series purely because of how joyful he is, and Keanu Reeves’s (“The Matrix,” “John Wick”) borderline cameo as Batman is one of the film’s most inspired choices.
The lack of truly memorable voice talent hints at a much larger issue for the film as a whole. It is nice to hear a group of mostly comedians, those who have experience contorting their voices, play most of the characters, but no one stands out. It’s easy to place blame at the actors, but a large part should also be placed on the film’s overall lackluster script. Honestly, it’s fine if the plotting of a script is predictable (and this one absolutely feels like its been duct taped together from ten different animated films from the last decade) but if the humor starts to become grating, then that’s an entirely different issue.
Written by Jared Stern (“The Watch,” “The LEGO Batman Movie”) and John Whittington (“The LEGO Batman Movie,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”), with Stern also directing, the script feels like the first draft of a joke book based around superheroes. It’s not just that the jokes are groan worthy most of the time, its that most of them were old hat ten years ago. Lines like “I have superpowers and I don’t even have a dead uncle” or “Why couldn’t I have gotten a magic hammer or something?” are cheap at best, but they’re at least far preferable to ones like the classic “how did that embarrassing photo get in there?” bit. But there are also some truly bizarre moments like how Merton the turtle will openly curse and be censored throughout the film. Not like a joke curse or censored by someone talking over her, like an actual television bleep noise curse. It’s really weird.
Animation wise, things aren’t much better. Despite being animated by Animal Logic, the studio behind “Legend of the Guardians,” the “LEGO” film series, and the “Happy Feet” series. Every film obviously requires a different look to sell it, and there are things admirable about the art direction in “Super-Pets.” But it also just feels so simplistic. The backgrounds and buildings might have a cool, pseudo art deco look to them as if referring back to the 90s Superman animated series. But Krypto and his friends look bland, smooth, and overly simplistic, as if they’re ready made to be dropped into an HBO Max original series with a significantly lower budget. That being said, like the art deco look, the lighting is quite strong across the film, especially in the third act where the look becomes much stronger.
Despite all of these criticisms, there’s one thing that “Super-Pets” has in spades and that makes it all worthwhile. It’s a relatively sincere film, though still not afraid to undercut an emotional moment with a poor joke. But when it is legitimately being sincere, it sneaks into your heart in ways that only a movie about pets and their owners can. The third act is also remarkably engaging once the action starts, making sure the film absolutely ends on its highest note.
While it would be nice if Stern and Whittington’s script was more confident in its sincerest moments and had far stronger jokes, the overall experience of “DC League of Super-Pets” (the official title, annoyingly) is a relatively painless one. The voice acting is perfectly fine, even pretty good at times, and the moments where the action picks up and the sincerity actually lands are engaging and fun. It’s a shame that this couldn’t have been the entire film, but in a world of increasingly mediocre family films, you could do a lot worse. 3/5
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