BEFORE: The cable guy came today, and was able to install a new piece of cable to replace the one that was going out through the back door (which was a fix for a part of cable damaged by a snowstorm 2 years ago) but was unable to fix my missing channels, IFC and TCM. Turns out the whole neighborhood is missing those channels, and they haven't been able to find where the problem is. This puts my viewing of the "31 Days of Oscar" programming in jeopardy.
Hmmm, they waited 9 years to make a sequel to "Cats & Dogs", which is an eternity in Hollywood years. If your audience is kids, those kids will be teenagers if you wait too long to put out a sequel. That's not really an encouraging sign.
THE PLOT: The ongoing war between the canine and feline species is put on hold when they join forces to thwart a rogue cat spy with her own sinister plans for conquest.
AFTER: They may have replaced some of the voice actors from the original (Tobey Maguire and Alec Baldwin are out), but they managed to keep some of the same characters - that's the advantage of working with beagles, you can just get another one that looks almost identical.
I enjoyed this one a little more than the first film, mostly because they took a definite turn towards parodying the James Bond films - not just in the watered-down title, but also by casting Roger Moore as the voice of the lead cat spy (with the name "Lazenby", nice touch) and adding an opening credits sequence that's very reminiscent of films like "Goldfinger" and "For Your Eyes Only", with silhouettes of cats and dogs (instead of hot babes), floating dog biscuits, and a very Shirley Bassey-like singer covering a Black Eyed Peas song. Wait, according to IMDB, that actually WAS Shirley Bassey. Wow.
The plot is still ridiculous, though - a cat has a plan to broadcast a high-pitched signal that will drive all dogs mad, so humans will be forced to cage them, and cats can take their place as human's main pets. And the idea that the cats would team up with the dogs to stop this plan is more than a little tenuous.
But it works as a parody of all spy films and action films in general, with tropes like the grizzled rookie teaming up with the hot-headed rookie, with pigeons (stool pigeons?) as informants and all this impossible high-tech gear. But making cats and dogs fly with jet-packs? Well, just because you CAN doesn't mean that you SHOULD.
Starring Chris O'Donnell (last seen in "Kinsey"), and the voices of James Marsden (last seen in "Superman Returns"), Nick Nolte (last seen in "Mother Night"), Christina Applegate (last heard in "Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"), Bette Midler (last seen in "The First Wives Club"), Neil Patrick Harris (last seen in "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay"), Wallace Shawn (last heard in "Tom & Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers"), Sean Hayes (carrying over from "Cats & Dogs"), Joe Pantoliano (ditto), Michael Clarke Duncan (ditto), and live cameos from Jack McBrayer (last seen in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall") and Fred Armisen (last seen in "Cop Out").
RATING: 5 out of 10 grappling hooks
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