Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank

The screenplay credit for Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank has to be seen to be believed.  While the film only has two credited writers (Ed Stone and Nate Hopper), the filmmakers had to add five additional credited names which include Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger.  The reason?  Paws of Fury is essentially a loose animated remake of the 1974 Western Spoof, Blazing Saddles, only set in feudal Japan, consisting of a cast of cats and dogs, and aimed at the under 10 crowd.

In fact, for the longest time in this film's over 10 years of off and on production, it went by the name Blazing Samurai.  If the thought of taking a hard-R comedy famous for its raunchy humor and adapting it into a harmless kiddie flick sounds like insanity to you, you'd be right.  Sure, there's a scene built around a group of people farting, a gag involving a horse getting punched, and a climax that literally winds up breaking the fourth wall and spilling the characters out into a movie theater, but this lacks the inspired zaniness of Brooks' classic film.  Speaking of Brooks, he lends his voice to one of the characters in this film, but don't get your hopes up.  He's reduced here to saying lines like, "There's no business like Shogun business".  

The action takes place in the ancient city of Kakamucho, which is inhabited entirely by cats who despise and are prejudiced against dogs.  The Shogun's evil official, Ika Chu (voice by Ricky Gervais), plots to run the cats out of town so that he can build his dream of a grand palace, which includes a giant jade toilet. (A running visual gag the movie uses constantly, yet never gets a laugh.) After he sends his goons, led by lead flunky Ohga (George Takei), to trash the town, the people demand a new samurai who can protect them.  That new samurai turns out to be a dog named Hank (Michael Cera, giving as little enthusiasm as he can to his voice over performance), whom Ika Chu hopes will be so despised by the people that they will leave by their own choosing so he can wipe the town away with his giant toilet and build his palace.

Wanting to improve his reputation with the town and become a proper hero, Hank teams up with the feline Jimbo (a lively Samuel L. Jackson), a former samurai himself whose career fell apart due to a catnip addiction.  This leads to a lot of references about training montages as the characters bond.  In fact, the movie loves to constantly remind us we're watching a movie, such as the opening scene, where someone on horseback smacks into the title of the film. ("Where did that come from?", he asks.  "The title department", says another.) Naturally, Hank will eventually be seen as a hero after he defeats the massive thug Sumo (Djimon Hounsou), and it will go to his head, leading to a rift between the two friends that will have to be mended before they team up to destroy Ika Chu's forces.

Despite legendary animation director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) credited as the lead filmmaker here, there's nothing in Paws of Fury that demands much attention.  Even the recent Minions: The Rise of Gru feels more substantial than this as it plays out.  The movie simply delivers no laughs, and despite its theme of racial prejudice, actually wallows in a few stereotypes about Japanese and Asian culture.  I guess the fact that the cast is made up out of animated cats and dogs allowed them to get away with it, but it still seems a bit dated.  The animation is uninspired, and the overall look of the film doesn't even manage to stand out.  Were it not for the fact that this movie has had such a long, troubled production history, and the fact that it's missed multiple releases dating back to 2015 or so, I would brush this off as a cheap and rushed production that was popped out in less than a year.

Regardless of the years of effort that were put to bringing this to the screen, the end result is uninspired and halfhearted.  Perhaps the inspiration behind this project ran out early on.  Or perhaps taking a comedy classic aimed at adults and adapting it into a cheap kid's movie wasn't a good idea to start with.

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