Paw Patrol: The Movie

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🎙️ EPISODE 395: 12.16.21 I think, without looking it up (who has the freaking 1 time?), that the screenwriters of this movie — Paw Patrol: The Movie, as it were, lest you thought you were watching Paw Patrol: The TV Show, and how could you? what with the enhanced CGI fur on these pups (Sky has been given a krimp, a very advanced ruffle but only to her seemingly elongated ears, a decision which strikes me as a move towards diversity, however: my equating this increased wildness in their choice of digital dog hair as somehow ethnic, itself feels racist and I just want to apologize upfront as that is not my intention at all) — I think the writers of this must be baby boomers as not yet fifteen minutes in we have two suspect references: (1) a truck driver voiced by Tyler Perry (cameo) says he has spilt blue slushy in his "skivvies" (slang for one's underpants; my father was fond of this term), and (2) Rider says that the Paw Patrol merchandise has been "selling like hot cakes 2," colloquial jargon that

certainly predates the boomers, The Greatest, the lesser thans, and everybody else in-between in the quickly fading memory of the 20th century, but even beyond its stayed, weirdly old-timey tone, the film reeks of the far greater crime of being a boring, humorless slog that lacks anything even remotely resembling creativity; it equates to perhaps 3.5 episodes worth of TV, smaller adventures inside the framework of The Movie whose greater plot revolves around Chase — the fucking ³ pig cop dog character — and his comical lack of confidence issues and unprocessed puppyhood trauma; I let my mind wonder at some point and imagined his shortcomings directly leading to the death of some auxiliary character (Cap'n Turbot, perhaps, or Cap'n Turbot's French doppelgänger who isn't even in this goddam thing, but I digress) and I imagined myself screaming at the screen, at the uselessness of law enforcement as my kids had to grapple with the actual reality of life and death. But this isn't a PIXAR film. My kids ⁴ enjoyed it quite a bit, in fact.

(Ed. Note: Apologies for not having the time and/or energy to expound on my theory of how hiring the actor who portrays Young Sheldon on the CBS show Young Sheldon as the voice of Chase was their attempt to make this thing sound "less Canadian" and not cronyism re: CBS/Viacom/Paramount/Paramount+ (the latter of which I am quite thrilled to be a new subscriber of — at ~$4/month, paid annually, what a bargain! — although I wish that they made older episodes of CBS Sunday Morning available, even if just a month or so of archives at a time? As it stands now, only one episode is available to stream each week, expiring [I suspect] on [you guessed it] Sunday when a new one airs; this creates an annoying time bomb situation and I would prefer such low-stakes affairs like wanting to watch a news magazine program not be tied to such stressful tick-tick-tick-tick, tick-tick-tick-tick, tick-tick-tick-tick,... the clock is running out, in so many ways: yes).

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FOOTNOTES:

1. Of course I wouldn't use "fucking" in this review of a children's movie. [BACK]

2. This sly, self-referential nod to the capitalist machine that is "Paw Patrol" and all which that entails (no pun intended) — your vast and unending array of toys, cloths, product, product, product, any product for which to slap on the logo and the likeness of all, some, or just one of the pups (we were recently gifted a sweatshirt for the 2-year-old with Rubble and Chase on it, only their construction helmet and police cap, respectively, colored in, yellow and blue, the rest of their renderings only a black outline, as if to say, "you get the point; your mind will fill in the rest; we don't need to add any more color to the prints on this garment; we need to save those resources for more product, product, product") — where was I? yes, let me tell you about this sly, self-referential nod to the capitalist machine that is "Paw Patrol" for I did not appreciate it. Not one bit. I thought, "no, you can't do this, please don't do this." There is no real joke here because it is bad; all of it. All of it is bad. Do you want me to explain why? You're knee-deep in the second footnote of a review of Paw Patrol: The Movie (2021, ), buddy. This one's on you. Not my problem. [BACK]

3. Excuse me, I couldn't resist. [BACK]

4. I was honestly shocked that my 7-year-old liked it as much as she did because she hasn't enjoyed Paw Patrol in years and was assertively "too old for that crap." It was as if I was watching her first true delve into the murky waters of nostalgia. [BACK]

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 394B - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 396 ⫸

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