A magical meteor crash lands in Adventure City and gives the PAW Patrol pups superpowers, transforming them into The Mighty Pups.
“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” is a good animation film for kids around six to ten or eleven years of age. It is a sequel to “PAW Patrol: The Movie” and manages a cohesive storyline for kids to follow. The characters are well-drawn, and the cute dogs of different breeds are attractive to kids.
The film lacks out-and-out violence, bouncing along on the staple villains and crashes and explosions. In addition, the story centers on poor little Skye (Mckenna Grace), the runt of her litter. No one wants her for their family, and she finally leaves her home following a delivery boy who turns out to be Ryder (Finn Lee-Epp), the head of the Paw Patrol.
The “digs” and machines the Paw Patrol use are cleverly designed. That is one of the film’s charms. The pups seem to have everything under control until Vee Vance (Taraji P. Henson), the NOT MAD scientist, steers a gigantic meteor to Earth, and the Patrol captures it. It’s little Skye who is curious enough, has the courage to investigate it, and comes upon the superpowers the meteor can endow.
What follows is adequate, interesting, attention-capturing actions with predictable twists and turns. The Paw Patrol finds each pup participating to overcome “Vee” and Humdinger and their evil plot. All is good, but eventually, the film bogs down, and the audience’s attention lags. Some condensing of the story and editing down the time would be helpful.
In the screening, almost all the kids lost attention about three-quarters of the way through the film. Those kids younger than five or six only paid attention about a quarter of the way through. I didn’t see any kids in attendance over eleven or twelve, so they obviously self-selected themselves as too old for the film. It’s a charming, entertaining outing for its target audience, and I must admit there were a couple of times even I laughed out loud!
In Theaters Friday, September 29th
