PAWS & EFFECTS
MARSHALL AND THE REST OF THE POOCH PACK HIT THE BIG SCREEN FOR AN EVEN BIGGER ADVENTURE
Paw Patrol: The Movie
Cast: Iain Armitage, Marsai Martin, Ron Pardo Director: Cal Brunker Duration: 1 h 28 m Available: In theatres
Paw Patrol is on a roll! It’s been less than a week since the Liberal government announced the country will be facing a fall vote, and already the Canadian-made animated show about a team of search and rescue dogs has released a full-length movie with an election theme.
Oh sure, you can argue that it’s been in the works since at least 2017. But that’s just the kind of planning a forward-thinking studio would do. And maybe the producers had a little inside information? After all, the prime minister did call out several of the pups by name at an event that year.
In any case, Paw Patrol: The Movie finds the canine sextet — Skye, Chase, Rocky, Marshall, Zuma and Rubble — and their human, er, companion butting heads with Mayor Humdinger, formerly the highest elected official in small-town Foggy Bottom, now in charge of Adventure City, which has a real New York vibe.
Humdinger, voiced by Ron Pardo, is looking to renew his mandate and has positioned himself as a fiscal conservative, speaking out against libraries, museums and dog parks, while trumpeting the virtues of crowd-pleasing fireworks and the Humdinger Hyper Loop, a dangerous mix of subway and roller-coaster. He’s also an unabashed cat person, which doesn’t sit well with the Paw Patrol.
After an opening that resembles one of those truck-dangling stunts you’d expect from the Fast and Furious franchise, Paw Patrol settles down to a rather tame tale about learning to overcome adversity and defeat bad guys, preferably by stealing their top hats and/ or arranging for them to be caught pants-down in their purple boxers in public.
And sure, I could female-dog about the movie’s lapses in logic and chronology — for instance, if Chase (Iain Armitage) is still a puppy, and he also has a traumatic backstory about being abandoned on the streets of Adventure City, didn’t that happen, like, a week ago?
But that would be about as kind as kicking a sleeping dog. So I’ll leave it there.parents, your Paw Patrol-loving offspring will no doubt be thrilled to see their heroes up on the big screen, joined by a scrappy new accomplice (Black-ish’s Marsai Martin plays Liberty the dachshund) and grooving to the pop tunes that interrupt the action every 10 minutes or so.
And while the whole thing has a snout-to-tail running time of 88 minutes, a full 11 of those are end credits, with no bonus scenes to watch out for.
Fun it may be, but Marvel it ain’t. ∏∏∏
Parents, your Paw Patrol-loving offspring will no doubt be thrilled to see their heroes up on the big screen. - Chris Knight