Warner Bros.
Starring: James Marsden, Bette Midler, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate
Directed by: Brad Peyton
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: This second installment in the Cats & Dogs series takes the James Bond spy spoof theme to new levels with many nods to Ian Fleming’s creation. Diggs (voiced by James Marsden) is a police dog who has been suspended as being “untrainable,” but he is recruited by the secret dog spy agency which fights a never-ending battle against cats to protect mankind. This time, however, the dogs must team up with the cats’ similar spy organization, MEOWS, when one of their former spies named Kitty Galore goes rogue and threatens to drive all the dogs of the world mad by broadcasting an unbearable sound.
Cinema Cats: Okay, these movies aren’t in the same league as the Bond films which they so lovingly parody but for silly entertainment they are perfectly fine. Standouts in this entry are the character Catherine (voiced by Christina Applegate), the spy from MEOWS whom Diggs and his partner Butch (voiced this time around by Nick Nolte) have to join.
Bad Kitties: There is also the return of Mr. Tinkles (voiced again by Sean Hayes) who appears in a scene spoofing The Silence of the Lambs. But the bad kitty this time around is Kitty Galore herself (voiced deliciously by Bette Midler) who is bent on revenge against all of dog and mankind. The one downside is that she is a hairless Sphynx cat, except they explain that her character fell into a vat of hair remover, rendering her hideous. It is sad that they should imply there is anything hideous about a Sphynx cat, even if the character itself is supposed to be a villain. It’s a kind of discrimminating typecasting in the cat world and we hope it doesn’t continue to be a trend.
Final Mewsings: If we treated hairless cats better maybe they wouldn’t try to destroy the world.
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