Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022)

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022)

3/10

Starring the voices of:

Michael Cera

Ricky Gervais

Mel Brooks

Gabriel Iglesias

Djimon Hounsou

Samuel L. Jackson

 

Directed by Rob Minkoff, Mark Koetsier and Chris Bailey

 

When anything bleeds on your screen, like the writer was probably tired and decided to recycle everything he knows about movies, you get this. They took all the ideas from the past and brought them to the present, recycling things we've seen in every movie possible. Not only is this movie boredom on the horizon, but it also makes you want to punch someone. There's no creativity at all, it’s not funny, and the whole “training a dog to be a cat samurai” is a mess.

Everything about this animation makes you want to locate the people behind it and ask them questions. The animation doesn’t try to pull any surprises. It just coasts on the boring idea of “we’ve seen this before, so why not see it again?”

You want to mention loose strings? This movie has them in loads. You want to talk about a lack of ideas? This movie is the perfect example of that. This is one of those animations you wish you never saw, and the one thing I will be grateful for is how forgettable it is, so I don’t have to worry about this mistake in the near future.

The story is as dull as they come. A dog who has been pushed around all his life (Hank) decides to become a samurai based on his past encounter with one. Samurais in this world are cats, and this dog leaves his dog land for cat land to learn how to be one.

He gets caught and would have been killed if a high-ranking official (Ika Chu) hadn’t hatched a plan where this dog could be of service. Ika Chu, an official of the land's Shogun, desires to expand his giant palace, but the land of Kakamucho is in his way. He has tried everything to get rid of the people, but nothing works. Now the people have requested a new samurai to protect them from raiders.

Knowing that cats will kill a dog at first sight, he sends Hank to the land to be its protector (samurai), believing Hank will be killed, giving him a reason to raid the town and destroy it—since it’s illegal to kill a samurai.

Hank goes to fulfill his duty after arguing that he knows nothing about being a samurai, as he came to learn. He survives the first encounter to Ika Chu’s displeasure. There, Hank meets Jimbo, a former samurai who agrees to train Hank so he can defend the town from raiders.

This would have been best done as a thirty-minute short film—early morning animation for toddlers who will just like the whole running around and colors. For more grown-up children, this would be the best thing to show them to guarantee they fall asleep.

Save yourself the time and money to see this animation. It’s not worth it one bit.