REVIEW: “DC League of Super Pets”

REVIEW: “DC League of Super Pets”

August 26th, 2022

Martin Goodman

The idea for this animated film originated in DC’s Adventure Comics #239 with the origin of the Legion of Super-Pets. The hallowed lineup that faced off against the deadly brain-globes were: Krypto the Super Dog, Streaky the Super Cat, Beppo the Super Monkey, and Comet the Super Horse. Proty II would join the party later. (Apparently, the local animal shelter on Krypton had a spare spaceship they borrowed from Jor-El).

Fast-forward sixty years into the future to the Warner Brothers animated film DC League of Super-Pets. Only Krypto, Superman’s loyal pet, is represented. The other S-Ps have been replaced, bringing with them not one shred of originality or imagination. DC has an excellent track record of producing good to excellent material for animated shows, from the art-deco wonder of Batman: The Animated Series to the peppy fun of DC Super Hero Girls and two popular incarnations of the Teen Titans. So how did a movie like Super-Pets go so miserably wrong?

One has to start with the writer/director, Jared Stern, who did an otherwise admirable job on a couple of Lego movies. He was aided by Lego colleague John Whittington in the screenwriting. But first, the story:

Krypto is upset over Superman’s pending engagement to Lois Lane, leading to snits of jealousy. So, Supes decides to find Krypto a pal at the animal shelter. Herein reside Ace, a Boxer turned in by his family; PB, a potbellied pig; Merton, an aged turtle, Chip, a red squirrel (the kind you always find at animal shelters, right?). Also present is a hairless guinea pig named Lulu, the abandoned former pet of Superman’s arch-enemy Lex Luthor. She is engaged in building a tractor beam to lasso a hunk of orange kryptonite, which will endow her evil little self with superpowers. She succeeds but turns the other captive animals into super-pets after the orange kryptonite crashes down.

Let’s get to it: As is my wont, I won’t give any spoilers away. Suffice it to say that Ace (super-strong and invulnerable), Merton (super-fast), PB (able to manipulate her size), and Chip (manipulator of powerful electricity) join Krypto to defeat the diabolical Lulu. The super-pets become pets in reality as the members of the Justice League adopt them. And yes, Superman marries Lois Lane with Krypto’s loving approval.

It is incredible how much is borrowed from other films. Begin with the fact that this is the fifth film starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. There are more in the pipeline. I don’t care if Johnson was one of the producers; it is impossible to watch Ace and Krypto spar and later bond without recalling the other films and seeing the voice actors behind the animated characters in your mind.

There is a scene in which the super pets are presented in dramatic still shots along with their new super-names that recalled a similar scene in the movie Croods 2. Also, a joke about a training montage was recently heard in Paws of Fury. Merton is a crotchety, sharp-tongued elderly female character who comes up big in the clutch; she has echoes of a similar character in Lightyear. Chip is reminiscent of squirrels from Over the Hedge and follows the rules of racial coding of animals seen in many recent animated features, including The Bad Guys and Paws of Fury (Ace is the Black character, and Chip the Hispanic one).

There is a penultimate showdown between Lulu and the S-Ps in which she absorbs ultimate orange kryptonite power and grows to enormous size. This convention goes as far back as the 1933 Betty Boop cartoon Snow-White in which the Queen transforms into a dragon. The same goes for Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, Hexxus in Ferngully, and, most recently, in 2021, Dr. Cyrus Strange in Addams Family 2. Finally, Krypto’s dilemma concerning who to rescue is replicated from the 2008 film The Dark Knight. And is the whole Superman/Lois Lane/Krypto thing originally from Ted?

I expected many DC in-jokes for the diehard fans, such as those found in Teen Titans Go!, but there were more of them directed at Marvel films. It is not unusual to find derivation, especially in today’s animated films, but there is such a thing as a surfeit. Very little in Super-Pets has not been seen elsewhere, which is a pity. Teen Titans Go To The Movies provided an excellent template for making an animated superhero comedy romp, but Super-Pets does not follow suit.

The animation was handled by Animal Logic, a superior studio, but this is not that outfit’s finest hour. There is odd texturing on many characters, with human characters (especially Superman) looking like vinyl toys. The malady also spreads to some of the animal figures, especially in PB. Krypto, in many scenes, appears not to have any fur at all, simply a painted white body. Human body proportions are often strange and cannot be accounted for by character designs alone. I could be wrong, but as I stayed through the credits, there appeared to be more effects artists than animators who worked on the film. Super-Pets has several set-pieces that possess very good SFX, but this alone does not make a great picture.

The DC League of Super-Pets is not a drastic failure but is simply too derivative and convention-driven to be considered a good film, and the animation does it no favors, either. So while it doesn’t quite deserve a place in Streaky’s litter box, it may have been better served aired in the DC Streamaverse rather than in general release.