Cats & Dogs - Revenge of Kitty Kahlohr (also in 3-D)

It's been nine years since "Cats & Dogs" first battled each other on our screens. Now the animal secret agents return to prevent nasty cat Kitty Kahlohr from taking over the world.

Police dog Diggs doesn`t really make life or work easy for his human partner Shane (Chris O`Donnell). With his stubbornness, he always ensures that operations do not go quite as smoothly as the police chief would like. And so Diggs ends up in the unloved kennel again and again. But his bravery doesn't go unnoticed, and Diggs is recruited by the secret service organization DOG to join forces with his new partner Butch to take down the nasty Kitty Kahlohr. Because the former MEOWS agent wants to drive all the dogs of the world mad with a nasty sound. But not only can Diggs not play by the rules even in the canine secret service, he and Butch soon find they need help to find Kitty Kahlohr. And that help, unfortunately, can only come from the hated cats of MEOWS. But can cats and dogs really work together?

After the yappy mutt "Marmaduke" put the fear of God into us at the movies not too long ago, there really wasn't much to expect from the second "Cats & Dogs" movie. And that is exactly the right attitude with which to view this work. Because if it is, this shaggy-haired James Bond homage definitely manages to provide some amusing moments. This starts with the successful opening credits, where Dame Shirley Bassey, once a performer of two Bond songs, performs Pink's hit "Get the Party started" in a classic Bond arrangement, and continues with numerous references to the popular agent flicks, but also to other genre classics like "Two Steely Professionals", "Die Hard" or even "The Silence of the Lambs". However, two particularly nice allusions are lost on German moviegoers: Kitty Kahlohr is called Kitty Galore in the English original, in reference to the legendary Pussy (also a word for cat in English) Galore from "Goldfinger". And the head of MEOWS is voiced in the US version by none other than ex-Bond Roger Moore, who then also bears the name of his one-time predecessor - Lazenby.

It is such incursions and moments that are likely to cause smirks or even quiet laughs, especially among older viewers who may/must accompany their dear little ones to the film. The rest of the humor, on the other hand, consists primarily of well-worn slapstick interludes, but they always work for kids. The many animals, a mix of real critters, computer animation and puppets, should also ensure that young viewers should thoroughly enjoy "Cats & Dogs- The Revenge of Kitty Kahlohr". Not really a good movie, but still a tolerable and in places even imaginative representative of "talking-animals-movies".

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp