One can wonder when writing a review for the children’s film genre should it be written from an adult’s perspective, who’s presence is essentially there to accompany the child and supervise the experience and content, or should one view it from the inner child’s vantage point. As a parent or person caring for a child what is important here is to evaluate the film for the themes, visuals and sound, the plot, characters and language. Honestly an hour into the film I wanted to evacuate all the children.
This is basically an animated Justice League film which mainly focuses on Superman’s dog Krypto, dubbed in Italian with the voice of Lillo, while Maccio Capatonda doubles Ace the Bat-Hound, and you guessed it, a potpourri of other pets with superpowers. Like all superhero films the themes revolve around good versus evil and in most storylines friendship, in this case between man and his dog. Lois Lane and Sups were canoodling and this made Krypto feel jealous and fearful of losing his best friend so Lois suggested getting a friend for him from the animal shelter and here is where the adventure begins. Next we see Lex using orange kryptonite to gain superpowers but this kryptonite finds its way to the pets.
After the capture of Superman and the Justice League, the animals come together with their newfound superpowers to rescue them from Lex Luthor at LexCorp. The Pet antagonist is Lulu, a guinea pig whose main goal is to destroy Krypto, Superman, and the League, getting revenge for all the times they foiled Lex.
One of the best scenes is at the beginning when Krypto is introduced to the audience at the moment when baby Kal-El escapes from his home planet of Krypton and … well you know the rest.
Despite many children in the audience the laughs were few and far between, and most of those came from the adults. This film is mainly composed of long scenes of violence with sprinkles of laughter, honestly, one could count how many times the audience laughed on two hands. One could say was because I watched the film in Italian so maybe it was not translated well from the colloquial dialogues. But after I wrote most of this review I compared my rating with others and in this case I agree with most of them. I give this film a 4/10. in my humble opinion a film of this genre should have more laughs instead of long drawn out violent action scenes since it is geared towards children. For example, one scene that stands out and I found disheartening was when Whiskers (Lulu’s kitten) says, ‘Now I’ll take your life’ and starts shooting laser bullets from her tail. This type of speech is inappropriate for the audience.
And I answered my question… I feel relieved that I saw this film before sharing it with my child. The opinion of parents is more important than ever considering many of the current events and changing culture happening all over the world.
This film could have been so much more if it preserved some inkling of the innocence and preciousness of childhood, which it did in respect to demonstrating how important friendship is even between man and animal. Also the graphics were great with a clever sound design to enhance them and cute characters but instead too dramatic and violent, especially for children.
Also one has to question the motives for creating such a film for this audience. How does Hollywood influence us, especially our children?
DC League of Superpets premiers in Italian cinemas on September 1st. Written and directed by Jared Stern, co-written by John Whittington, based on DC characters and Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
Song Paradiso is an Alabama native residing in Rome after living most of her life in London as a never-ending University student but found time to be an accomplished singer, musician, photographer, goldsmith, dating coach, painter and Complementary therapist using Energy Medicine and Homeopathy. Deejaying for friends since the age of 3 she feels that being raised in the 70s/80s gave her a firm foundation for music appreciation thanks to her father’s vast array of vinyl from all genres such as Jazz, Funk, Blues, Classical and Rock. She attended concerts such as Parliament, The Jackson 5, Earth Wind and Fire, Neil Young, Grateful Dead plus many others. She is a fatalist and this was reinforced when she had a Spiritual experience in Rome and swears she will never leave but she still travels, loves reading about Ancient History, Natural Health, Esoterica and the Arcane. She is obsessed about being a mother, organic living, yoga, UAPs, cinema and music but her guilty pleasures are Reality TV and vegan gelato.
Philosophy: Everything has a Divine Spark