Jeff Goldblum, Elizabeth Perkins and Tinkles in "Cats & Dogs."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Jeff Goldblum Director: Lawrence Guterman Rated: PG, with comic violence Length: 87 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(July 3, 2001) -- Fur flies but interest falls in Cats & Dogs, a fast-paced but charmless saga about how much canines and felines hate each other.

Mechanical and dependent on gimmickry, Cats & Dogs shows the enmity between the animals as a global conflict. Far more goes on among household pets than their human owners can imagine.

For openers, animals can talk, though they hide that fact from humans. And both camps have elaborate wartime organizational structures, high-tech communications and espionage systems, and more weaponry than Third World countries.

But Cats & Dogs has none of the intriguing charm of the Babe films -- it fails to establish animal characters we can care about. With few exceptions, the pets are nothing more than furry pawns.

The exceptions are at the two extremes of the conflict -- and overly obvious: Lou, the oh-so-cute beagle puppy who becomes the hero, and Mr. Tinkles, the vicious, power-obsessed Persian who wants to lead the felines to world domination.

The battleground is the Brody household, where the human father (Jeff Goldblum) is a nerdy basement scientist. He's creating a serum that will eliminate human dog allergies, giving dogs a paw up in the competition for human attention.

Brody's wife (Elizabeth Perkins) tries to get her husband to dote more on their moody son, Scott (Alexander Pollock). The latest addition to the household is the puppy, Lou.

The amiable animal finds himself at ground zero in the battle between good dogs and bad cats.

Cats & Dogs director Lawrence Guterman and his writers are clearly dog lovers. There are no good cats in the film. That alone will alienate half the film's potential audience.

Cats & Dogs also is encumbered with far too much James Bond and Mission: Impossible paraphernalia and parody that little kids won't understand, anyway.

A smaller-scale battle between better-defined and more appealing pets would have made for a more memorable film -- a la Lady the dog and the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp. Nothing here touches that.

Of the dozen animals you get to know in Cats & Dogs, no cats and only one dog is female. (And the dog, voiced by Susan Sarandon, is a stray dog with a shady reputation.)

Most of the film's voice work is nondescript. Tobey Maguire does Lou with the likable, low-key approach Michael J. Fox has brought to similar assignments, and Alec Baldwin makes his stern commander dog a variation of his Jimmy Doolittle in the current Pearl Harbor.

So, don't think Babe when you consider this film for your family. Think, 102 Dalmatians, at best.