Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank

Unambitious but entertaining, the new animated adventure about critters doing martial arts -- the second this week! -- passes the low bar it sets for itself.

Sometimes you can tell when a movie just isn’t trying very hard.

“Do, or do not. There is no try.” So sayeth another cinematic figure embracing vaguely ancient Eastern values. And he was right, in a way, when it comes to movies: you can make a perfectly serviceable one without displaying a lot of ambition or effort.

Enter “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank.” It’s the story of a dog who wanders onto an island populated only by cats with designs of becoming a samurai. (I guess they don’t have them on pooch peninsula.) He gets used as a pawn by a scheming cat overlord, trained up by an over-the-hill feline samurai, and gets around to some derring-do in the end, finding acceptance in a strange land.

There’s a lot of pieces of other movies in here, from “Yojimbo” to “The Seven Samurai” and “High Noon.” Mostly what it is is a sorta-remake of “Blazing Saddles,” with Hank (Michael Cera) in the role of the Black sheriff. When he shows up they want to kill him, but eventually he worms his way in their furry hearts.

(Heartworms! Get it?? …OK, I’ll stop now.)

Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice of Jimbo, a disgraced samurai who’s dived so hard into a bottle of catnip and obesity that the people of the tiny town don’t even realize he lives there. Hank is appointed town samurai — he even has his own office complete with a jail, just like a wild West sheriff — by Ika Chu (Ricky Gervais), who’s trying to push out everybody in the town to impress the Shogun (Mel Brooks).

The idea is that even if the cats don’t immediately smother the dog interloper, he’ll be so inept at his job that he’ll be a pushover.

A few other amusing critters populate the background. Kylie Kuioka voices Emiko, a tiny girl cat who looks up to Hank and becomes his biggest supporter, not to mention displaying samurai-like tendencies on her own. Djimon Hounsou is Sumo, a monstrously huge cat sent by Ika Chu to take out Hank, but winds up becoming an ally.

Michelle Yeoh voices Emiko’s mother, initially one of the most hostile to Hank, and George Takei is Ika chu’s dimwitted right-hand kitty.

The movie is directed by Rob Minkoff (“The Lion King”), Mark Koetsier and Chris Bailey, with no less than seven people with story and/or screenwriting credits, including Brooks and Richard Pryor, based on the “Saddles” script. There really isn’t a lot of similarities between the movies other than the basic set-up, but I get the sense checks and credits were dolled out to make everyone happy.

Cera does a lot of voicework nowadays, anytime it seems like Hollywood needs a wimpy beta male sound. It’s a living. Gervais has a lot of fun with his scheming character, who’s very fussy and plans to build a massive green toilet bowl for the shogun to go in. Jackson has fun while phoning it in, doing riffs on some if his iconic lines from other movies.

Kids will enjoy watching Hank get smacked and scratched, along with plenty of other energetic action bits, including some “bullet time” hi jinks for extra fun. The angle on accepting others who are different from you is so brushed on so lightly they may not even notice.

Its one saving grace for adult audiences is that the movie seems to know what it is, and even pokes fun at itself along the way. Several times the characters break the third wall and discuss the movie they’re making, such as the requirement that it be no more than 85 minutes long (not including end credits) because that’s the attention span of its target audience.

There’s not a lot of artistry or extra pizazz to “Paws of Fury.” But it at least knows what it wants to do, does it amiably and is done with it. I’ll probably forget this flick in a week, but my boys had a good ol’ rip. It’s enough.