BEFORE: Well, I said I was going to get through all the outstanding DC Comics films before starting on the Marvel ones - "The Flash" doesn't seem to be doing too well at the box office so I'd better hurry up and get to the movie theater next week before it goes away. Is that likely to happen? I can't risk it, if I miss one of the four films I want to see on the big screen, I'll have to re-arrange my chain...let's keep this Superhero Summer going!
Dwayne Johnson carries over again from "Hercules". I'm so bored at home that I've programmed my chain all the way to Halloween - might as well take it 20 more films and figure out what I'm going to watch on Christmas...
THE PLOT: Krypto the Super-Dog and Superman are inseparable best friends, sharing the same superpowers and fighting crime side by side in Metropolis. However, Krypto must master his own powers for a rescue mission when Superman is kidnapped.
AFTER: I've always been a bit confused about Krypto the Super-Dog - part of the problem is that whole "sole survivor of the dead planet" thing, because that's what Superman is, except for Krypto. And Supergirl. And if you watch the current "Superman & Lois" TV show, there's also Clark's half brother. Oh, and then there's General Zod and Ursa, they were in the Phantom Zone or something at the time the planet blew up. And then all the people in the bottled city of Kandor. So he's just NOT the last survivor, there are a whole bunch, including, and I swear this is true, Beppo the Super-Monkey. Superman flew in a rocket (or a giant prism, whichever) alone to the planet Earth. Only now THIS movie says he wasn't alone, he had Krypto as a puppy with him. Umm, OK, only what did they both eat on this month-long journey to Earth? Just sunlight, I suppose.
But follow my logic here for just a second, we have dogs on Earth because they evolved from wolves over millions of years, and then humans decided to invent cities and farms, and needed dogs to do specific functions for them, so they bred dogs for particular purposes, and over time the dogs came to look certain ways, and that's why we have so many different types of dogs, but they're all the same species, they can produce offspring together. The odds against dogs, or any creatures resembling dogs, are astronomical, because different events probably took place on Krypton, not the same ones on Earth that caused dogs to look the way they are. Krypto is not a dog, he's an alien creature that somehow looks exactly like an Earth dog, which shouldn't be possible. I guess he identifies as a dog, and these days maybe that's enough? But, he's not one, sorry. Alien creatures shouldn't look like Earth creatures, and for that matter, Kryptonian people shouldn't look like Earth people, but for some reason they do. Superman's colleague on the Justice League, the Martian Manhunter, sometimes appears human, but it's an illusion - his real form is that of a green Martian and he doesn't look human at all.
Whoever created Krypto for the comic books clearly didn't put much thought into it, they just wanted Superman (or maybe Superboy) to have a dog. Ah, I just looked it up, Superman's father, Jor-El, used Krypto as a test subject before sending his son off to Earth in a rocket - but something happened to Krypto's rocket, it got knocked off course, and he didn't arrive on Earth until years later, when Kal-El had become Superboy. That all makes a bit more sense, only again, what did Krypto eat for years in space? As with many of the DC characters, Krypto's use and origin has been changed many times as new writers take over the comics and jettison the concepts written by previous writers - putting Krypto and Jor-El in the same rocket is just the latest example of this. So I guess if you knew Krypto back in the day, well, you don't really know him now.
The same goes for Ace, the Bathound. The first version of Ace appeared in Batman comics back in 1955, and he's been forgotten, re-introduced, forgotten again, changed around, and re-booted many times. The latest version was a dog belonging to the Joker that attacked Batman, and after the Joker was defeated, the dog was sent to a kennel, but Batman's butler Alfred went back and adopted him, which is a nice touch. The version seen in "DC League of Super-Pets" is a boxer, and his pointy ears seem to mimic the ones on Batman's cowl, another nice touch. He's in a dog shelter because his family gave him away, the couple thought he bit their young daughter, but he was just trying to keep her from falling down a set of stairs.
The thing that gives the animals here super powers is orange Kryptonite, and that material is another thing that writers fool around with, whatever they want to have happen, they just invent a new color of Kryptonite that causes that thing. Green hurts/kills Superman, red kryptonite makes him evil, white kills plants, gold removes Superman's powers, and I think pink Kryptonite makes him gay. Maybe? There was orange kryptonite before in the comic books, and it did give super powers to animals, but only for 24 hours. OK, good to know. Maybe that's the case here, and the animals affected by it will eventually lose their super powers - because having THIS many super pets could create some problems.
Eventually, there's a pet for every hero and villain - the one that identifies with Lex Luthor is a bald guinea pig who got inspired to be evil when she was experimented on in a LexCorp lab. Krypto rescued all the test animals at one point, and Lulu resented him for it - she wanted to stay in the lab with Lex. So once she gets powers from the orange kryptonite, she knows exactly what to do, get her revenge on Superman and Krypto. Makes some sense. She gives some green Kryptonite to Krypto in a piece of cheese (dastardly!) and he loses his powers for several days (NITPICK POINT: why didn't she use the gold stuff?). Krypto has to find the other pets from the shelter who got exposed and get them to use their powers to rescue Superman, because he's got only normal dog powers. Krypto also has to learn to be an Earth dog for the first time, to run without super-speed and track things down by smell, not with x-ray vision.
There's some good stuff here, like focusing on all of the animals in shelters, not just the cute ones, and saying that they all have worth. PETA must have loved this film. And even the pot-bellied pig and the jittery chipmunk find their forever owners, so good messages all around for once in a kid's movie. But the story starts at ridiculous and gets more and more so, even in a world full of super-powered heroes and villains, a team full of powered animals is a bit much. And the whole Justice League gets taken down by ONE guinea pig? Seems unlikely.
Some of the voice casting is just really inspired, like John Krasinski as Superman, and Marc Maron as Luthor. Krasinski would never, ever be cast as a live-action Superman, he just doesn't have the same look as Cavill or even Routh, but wow, his voice is really perfect for the character. Same for Maron, I would normally expect Luthor's voice to be more refined, but I love Marc Maron and I'm glad he was considered for the role. Keanu Reeves as Batman? Again, I can't see it ever happening in live-action but if you're just casting on voice alone maybe this one is fine also.
This version of Aquaman is not in line with Justice League continuity, though, and which Green Lantern is this? Jessica Cruz? Never heard of her - I realize that Hal Jordan is still box office poison, but they could have used the John Stewart or the Kyle Rayner version. I guess I've seen Jessica Cruz in the recent Justice League trades, but she looks completely different here, why couldn't they just keep her Latino and not make her plus-sized? Sure, body-positive images are in fashion, but come on, it's a comic book movie, a fantasy. Isn't it a stereotype to say that Latina women are chunky, and play into that?
I'm going to try and be nice here with my rating, because the film is for kids and it at least tried to send out some positive messages about adopting shelter pets. But still, it's all very silly. I guess just treat it as taking place in an alternate DC universe, where pets can talk to each other. Maybe that's universe #51 out of 52 in their megaverse?
Also starring the voices of Kevin Hart (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Kate McKinnon (last seen in "Life Partners"), John Krasinski (last seen in "Nobody Walks"), Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Ibiza: Love Drunk"), Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Diego Luna (last seen in "Blood Father"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Respect"), Keanu Reeves (last seen in "Street Kings"), Thomas Middleditch (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Ben Schwartz (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "How It Ends"), Maya Erskine (last heard in "Scoob!"), Yvette Nicole Brown (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Jameela Jamil (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Jemaine Clement (last seen in "I Used to Go Here"), John Early (last seen in "Other People"), Dascha Polanco (last seen in "In the Heights"), Daveed Diggs (last seen in "The Starling"), Alfred Molina (last seen in "Identity"), Lena Headey (last seen in "The Purge"), Keith David (last seen in "Unplugging"), Busy Philipps (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"), Winona Bradshaw, David Pressman, Sam J. Levine, Jared Stern, Michelle Morgan, Amanda Ames, Gavin McCrillis,
RATING: 6 out of 10 floating hot dogs
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