DC League of Super-Pets Is a Family-Friendly Comedy Super Enough to Tolerate

DC League of Super-Pets is a CG-animated film about Superman’s dog learning to make and share friends that is much better than you would expect. From the studio that brought you the highs of The Lego Movie and the lows of Space Jam: A New Legacy, it’s unsurprisingly technically competent and surprisingly watchable for adults. While the comedic balance for family movies between “keeping kids entertained” and “keeping adults from resenting the experience” can at times swing too far in one direction or the other, the film mostly maintains the proper ratio: Heavily favoring children’s comprehension but smart enough and with enough subtleties for accompanying adults to not be bored. And its longer-than-average 101-minute runtime still managed to keep the children in my screening attentive and contented. It’s not one of those movies for kids that you watch and think “Actually, adults need to see this.” It’s just one where if their kids ask them to go see it, you don’t need to feel too bad for them.

The film focuses on Krypto (Dwayne Johnson), Superman’s (John Krasinski) lifelong companion from Krypton, learning to be less jealous in his relationship with Superman—first to accept that Superman can also love Lois (Olivia Wilde), and then learning that it’s not just okay but necessary for him to have other friends. They come in the form of Ace (co-lead Kevin Hart, whose voice was harder to hide behind his character) and his friends from the animal shelter (Vanessa Bayer, Natasha Lyonne, Diego Luna), all of whom get superpowers after Lex Luthor (Marc Maron) brings a meteorite of orange Kryptonite to the earth in an attempt to empower himself. A comedy adventure ensues where the animals have to step in to help the Justice League (voiced, in addition to Krasinski, by Keanu Reeves, Dascha Polanco, Jermaine Clement, Daveed Diggs, John Early and Jameela Jamil). The movie references as far back as the 1970s-80s Super Friends and as recently as DC films from the last half-decade, but it doesn’t get weighed down by those references—they’re more structural or aesthetic than drawn-out rhetorical callbacks.

Moreover, despite a mid-credits scene where two of the antagonists link up and a post-credits scene that’s a sort of tie-in marketing gag, Super-Pets stands on its own. Perhaps there are underlying assumptions by the moviegoing public that animated for-kids features like this won’t ascribe to any mainline cinematic continuity, but regardless I’m impressed at Warner Bros.’ intentional utilization of different standalone timelines. Suicide Squad, Peacemaker and Wonder Woman 84 seem to come from the DCEU Zach Snyder once helmed, but Joker and The Batman are separate from that and one another, and this stands apart from all of them.

While running gags about Batman’s grief imply some assumed prior knowledge for the audience, they work just as well without any. The film never allows itself to get bogged down by any of the lore it’s drawing from. It’s just part of telling a joke-filled story. And those jokes aren’t all just winking or fourth-wall-breaking quips, though there are nods in that direction. The news headline tickers were a great touch, as was the company branded on seemingly all the everyday appliances.