Dog Man

A very tactile and energetic adaptation of the popular kids' comics, though a little hard to sit through for those who count their age in double digits (and up).

My problem is they keep making movies of popular games or books right after my boys have aged out of the prime demographic for them. They absolutely devoured the “Dog Man” comics when they were littler, as they’re a perfect vehicle for early readers: lots of colorful, boingy action and just enough wordplay to force them to keep up.

Now here’s the film adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s hugely popular books, and it’s fast-paced and energetic and the animation has a wonderful tactile feel to it. And they’re just a bit tool old for it (11 and 14).

And me, some multiple of those numbers I’ll not reveal… I confess I had trouble staying awake at points.

If you haven’t heard of “Dog Man,” the premise is as simple as the title. Police officer Knight and his trusty canine companion, Greg (both voiced by Peter Hastings) are terribly injured on the job while chasing their nemesis, Petey the cat (Pete Davidson), an evil scientist type. The doctors can only save the best parts of them: Greg’s head and Knight’s body, stitching them together to create the super-cop, Dog Man.

This isn’t presented as gruesome but a combining of two best friends forever. He seems to have human-level intelligence but can’t talk, and retains all the usual dog-like predilections, such as an insatiable need to chase balls and squirrels.

Dog Man keeps putting Petey in jail, but the overbearing Mayor (Cheri Oteri) repeatedly lets him escape (via an incompetent brother of a warden). Despite his success, Dog Man gets chewed out by the shouty Chief (Lil Rel Howery) and taken off the beat, even though the “best reporter in the world” (and seemingly the only one in the city), Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher), lavishes glowing coverage upon him.

Pete gets the idea to create a clone of himself to make him twice as effective, but screws up the calculation and gets a little kitten instead of a full-grown version. Voiced by Lucas Hopkins, Li'l Petey is kindhearted and in touch with his emotions in contrast to his papa’s nefarious ways. He wants to be friends with everyone, including Dog Man, which leads to some estrangement between big and little Peteys.

Despite being the smallest, Li’l Petey seems the wisest of all, and indeed the imparting of life lessons flows up rather than down in this movie. (Hastings, a veteran of multiple animated shows including “Captain Underpants,” also wrote and directed.)

I can’t say as I remember the character of Flippy the Fish from the comics, an evil super-villain with telekinesis. He’s actually dead as the story opens — presumably from some previous adventure — with his intact head and tail connected by just a fishbone. Pete zaps him back to life to be an ally, but then Flippy (Ricky Gervais) goes rogue, wanting to end all do-gooders… and Li’l Petey is the biggest around.

There’s lots of car chases (and crashes), strange gizmos and other cartoon hero staples. Li’l Petey gets to wear a super-suit, and eventually a good chunk of the city’s buildings are turned into robot titans doing smash-smash things.

Petey’s own estranged father shows up for a while (Stephen Root), and Grampa is even more sour-pussed than his offspring. This is actually a quite lacerating and poignant moment for the story, because even though Pete is shown to be capable of some level of redemption, you can’t fix other people — even your family.

Released under the DreamWorks Animation umbrella (with the actual animating outsourced to Jellyfish Pictures), this is high-level visual work. The figures almost seem like felt puppets with a 3-D feel to them. The action is deliberately not smooth, as if there were frames missing from the film, similar to the “Lego” movie franchise. This underscores the notion of a comic book sprung to life.

It’s well-made stuff, but so fast-paced it’s overwhelming to my old eyes and brain. My kids were able to keep up, but I caught them wandering at times. I’d say the ideal age range for “Dog Man” is probably 4 to 9.

Sometimes life passes you by, and you’re just not in the right place for something you would’ve loved a few years earlier.

One of the trailers we saw with “Dog Man” was for “Minecraft,” which is practically a required gaming phase for boys. Mine were crazy for it until they got into “Fornite” last year and, well, with my luck that movie will be coming out right after they’ve gotten driver’s licenses.