PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK (2022)

PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK (2022)

Tagline: Time to mark some territory

(Animation, Comedy, Samurai) [PG]

Wait. That music. Hey, this is the training montage, isn't it? Hey, can we just skip ahead to the part where I'm good?

In this one, a town full of cats needs a hero because they are being repeatedly attacked by Ika Chu. Chu’s plan is to get rid of the town entirely. Hank (a dog) is put in charge of protecting the town and trains under a teacher that doesn’t want him there. Can Hank save the town from the ruthless Ika Chu or will the village be lost forever? 

First off when I saw the previews for this thing, I was thinking it looked a heck of a lot like KUNG FU PANDA had lost its way and somehow morphed into a less interesting and more crass, new version of its former self. I honestly saw it because I was bored and needed something to do that day. I regret it. 

Voice casting wise this movie is lit like a Griswold family Christmas tree. We have Michael Cera who has done lots of voice work in the past in the part of Hank. Ricky Gervais who voices Ika Chu, the legendary Samuel L. Jackson as Jimbo, the also legendary Mel Brooks as The Shogun, Gabriel Iglesias as chuck, and on and on. For those reasons I was pretty curious to see this even though it looked like it could be rough. 

Some good things about this thing were the fact that the artwork is actually decent. We get some cool-looking little cats, well-done lighting, and cool backgrounds that give this one a western Kung Fu, Blazing Saddles feel. I liked all those things. I also liked the idea of the movie kind of taking this tongue-in-cheek self-aware approach with nods to the audience that they are fully aware this thing is cheese city. 

Where this thing just sucks is that the humor they try to cram in this film is all modern. It doesn’t fit the setting and it’s extremely un-funny. It’s like going to a comedy club and getting a dude that is on his first gig and he’s really only got stale “Love Boat” one-liners. At first, you are sitting there trying to crack a smile because you know it’s his first night, but by the middle of the show, you are already half out the door trying to figure out what else to do that night because you’ve had enough. Watching this movie feels like an assignment and not like something you would purposely “choose” to do. 

Even trying to put my best “I am a 10-year-old who likes fart jokes” face on, didn’t come close to improving my experience. This damn thing is a downer and it’s really kind of a bummer given the talent that was involved. It feels like no one read the script. To top it all off, if you go to the theater you will be assaulted with the short before the movie called BIG NATE. That thing is the worst pile of garbage I have seen in maybe a decade. 

I wanted to love this thing and I really wasn’t expecting something mind-blowing like KUNG FU PANDA. I was expecting it to be watchable. This one didn’t get there. It is not the worst movie of 2022, but it worked very hard to achieve that. The production started a full 7 years ago and somehow no one raised their hand and said…” why do we hate kids and their parents?”

I have to give this one a 2 out of 7. Now I want Nickelodeon to go to their collective rooms and think about what they’ve done and how to fix their company. 

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