DreamWorks has some wonderfully zany creations to its credit and the box-office receipts to back them up, but this one really strains the relationship. It’s exhausting.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 2, 2025

It's all very, very silly. That, combined with the relentless pace, should ensure that it delights its target audience of under-tens, but the adults shouldn't fear this dog's bark too much.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 21, 2025

Like Captain Underpants, it's really entertainingly anarchic fare.

| Feb 19, 2025

Hastings preserves Pilkey's key ingredients: lavatorial sniggers, winking details, a kid-made aesthetic...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2025

It is all steeped in this layer of fundamental creepiness that I don't understand. What's going on with the kids, people?

| Feb 11, 2025

Dog Man, the half-dog, half-cop protagonist of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants spin-off book series, is a gloriously funny creation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 10, 2025

It’s hard to imagine another 2025 mechanism for delivering giggles to children and adults alike that works half as well as Dog Man.

| Feb 7, 2025

Accompanying adults are unlikely to require many tissues – we are some distance from vintage Pixar here – but may be surprised by how often they find themselves chuckling at the film’s wacky excesses.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2025

Dog Man is packed with goofy gags that whizz past, with no let up from the hectic pace. It’s a movie with the energy levels of a classroom of six-year-olds on the last day of summer term.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2025

Much like watching a child’s play session, whenever the humour begins to get a little stale or the plotting becomes a bit exhausting, Dog Man’s animation is there to ensure the joy of creativity wins out.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2025

Adapted with a silly, self-referential charm by writer-director Peter Hastings, resulting in a cutely frenetic but narratively somewhat flimsy animated feature.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2025

A silly, hyperactive, generally sweet kids’ movie that should prove diverting to its intended audience and not totally grueling for the parents who have to go along.

| Jan 31, 2025

It may come from a bestselling series, but a family film this thoughtfully constructed is actually an antidote to soulless, IP-oriented entertainment. It takes a lot of work to be this ridiculous. And — pay attention, studios — it’s totally worth it.

| Jan 31, 2025

“Dog Man” is a loving and visually inventive if somewhat exhausting parody of cop flicks, superhero sagas and dog-cat tension.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 31, 2025

The humor balances nicely between goofy jokes for kids and references for adults, who will appreciate the signs on the buildings and the references to classics like “Apocalypse Now.”

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 30, 2025

He makes his way to the big screen with silliness (and a love of tennis balls) intact, but Dog Man deserves a frenetic pace to match its barrage of absurd jokes and plot twists.

| Jan 30, 2025

Your kids will rejoice while you secretly hope they’ll forget this headache-inducing movie exists once it hits streaming. Get ready for repeat viewings galore.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 29, 2025

While few might expect a film named after a peculiar protagonist to contain resonance to match its wackiness, the fact that Hastings and company took a stab at doing so without streamlining its scattershot themes feels like a wasted opportunity.

| Jan 29, 2025

Something is missing. The Hollywoodization -- like a ray blasted from a typical Pilkey lumbering robot -- has leveled-out the idiosyncrasy and overstuffed the narrative. Newcomers may be stunned -- and not in a good way.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 29, 2025

Dog Man is a sugar rush. If Emmet Brickowski ever made a movie, it would have the same energy as this one, where the fourth wall is broken so many times you’d have to buy out Home Depot’s stock of joint compound to patch it.

| Original Score: B | Jan 29, 2025