Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (also known as Cats & Dogs 2 or Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore) is a 2010 American-Australian live action/animated spy comedy film directed by Brad Peyton, produced by Andrew Lazar, Polly Johnsen, Greg Michael and Brent O'Connor with music by Christopher Lennertz and Shirley Bassey and written by Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich. The film stars Chris O'Donnell and Jack McBrayer. The film also stars the voices of James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Katt Williams, Bette Midler, Neil Patrick Harris, Sean Hayes, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Clarke Duncan, Wallace Shawn and Roger Moore. The film is a stand-alone sequel to the 2001 film Cats & Dogs, with more focus on its animal characters than the previous film, and was released on July 30, 2010 by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received extremely negative reviews from film critics and it earned $112.5 million on an $85 million budget. A video game of the same title was developed by 505 Games and was released for the Nintendo DS on July 20, 2010.

Plot
Unbeknownst to humans, dogs and cats are highly intelligent, capable of speech, and maintain spy agencies to protect the world. In Germany, a bloodhound named Rex discovers a Cocker Spaniel puppy stealing secret codes; the thief reveals herself to be Kitty Galore, a hairless Sphynx cat, and escapes. At a San Francisco car dealership, cat mascot Crazy Carlito plans to bomb the building. Police officer Shane Larson and his dog Diggs arrive on the scene. Diggs retrieves the detonator from Carlito but bites it in the process, blowing up the building. Butch and Lou, now a fully grown Beagle and the head of D.O.G. HQ, watch the incident. Lou wants to recruit Diggs as an agent, and Butch reluctantly agrees.

Diggs is locked in the police kennels to prevent further accidents. Butch arrives and brings him to D.O.G. HQ. After tracking down a pigeon named Seamus with valuable information, Diggs and Butch meet a M.E.O.W.S. (Mousers Enforcing Our World's Safety) agent named Catherine also in pursuit of Seamus. Catherine reveals that Kitty Galore was a former M.E.O.W.S. agent named Ivana Clawyu who, on a mission at a cosmetics factory, was chased by a guard dog and fell into a vat of hair removal gel, causing her to lose all her fur. Unrecognizable and humiliated by her fellow agents and humans, Kitty left M.E.O.W.S. and vowed revenge on humans and dogs.

Lou forms an alliance with Tab Lazenby, head of M.E.O.W.S, to take down Kitty Galore. At a cat lady's home, the team discover that Calico, Mr. Tinkles' former aid, has been sending Kitty stolen technology to Kitty via pigeons. Diggs attacks Calico, who tries to drown the team in cat litter. They manage to escape, and interrogate Calico who claims not to know Kitty’s whereabouts.

The team travels to Alcatraz where a mentally ill Mr. Tinkles is confined. He provides one clue: “A cat's eye reveals everything.” When Kitty Galore learns that the cats and dogs have joined forces, she hires mercenaries Angus and Duncan MacDougall to kill Seamus on the boat returning from Alcatraz. Diggs subdues Angus and accidentally throws him overboard. Fed up with Diggs’ mishaps, Butch dismisses him from the team and leaves with Seamus to salvage clues.

Catherine takes Diggs to her home, where he reveals that past experiences have made him unable to trust anyone, leading to difficulty following orders and spending most of his life in kennels. Catherine assures him if he continues to think that way, no one will able to help him. Diggs realizes his error, and follows Catherine to M.E.O.W.S. HQ, where they learn Kitty is hiding at a fairground with her new owner, amateur magician Chuck the Magnificent.

At the fair, Diggs and Catherine are captured by Kitty and her henchcat, Paws. Kitty reveals her plot to transmit the “Call of the Wild” – a frequency only dogs can hear that will make them hostile to humans, who will leave dogs alone and unwanted in kennels – via an orbiting satellite to all televisions, radios, and cell phones, using the fair’s flying swings ride as a satellite dish. Diggs and Catherine escape and are joined by Butch and Seamus. Seamus presses a red button, believing it will shut down the ride, but instead activates Kitty’s signal, and dogs around the world begin to react. Paws battles them, revealing he is a robot; Diggs tricks him into biting the device’s wires, destroying the satellite. Kitty's pet mouse Scrumptious, fed up with Kitty's abuse, launches the cat, leaving her covered in cotton candy and landing in Chuck’s hat.

With the mission a success, Diggs goes to live with Shane before returning to H.Q. to learn Mr. Tinkles has escaped prison with Calico.

Cast

 * Chris O'Donnell as Shane Larson, a police officer who wants to adopt Diggs; however, the police will not allow it.
 * Jack McBrayer as Chuck, Kitty's new owner and an aspiring but scatterbrained amateur magician.
 * Fred Armisen as Friedrich (cameo), a German worker who first finds Kitty Galore (disguised as a puppy) in a dumpster outside.
 * Paul Rodriguez as Crazy Carlito (cameo), the mad bomber
 * Kiernan Shipka as a young girl who makes a cameo appearance when Diggs, Butch, Catherine, and Seamus are in the park. She is scared away by Seamus talking in front of her. She reappears on the ferry and at the fairground (both instances seeing Duncan talking and Kitty pleading for help respectively).
 * Betty Phillips as Cat Lady

Voice cast

 * James Marsden as Diggs, an arrogant, dimwitted, rebellious, impulsive, and egotistical German Shepherd who becomes an agent of D.O.G.
 * Nick Nolte as Butch, a gruff-voiced Anatolian Shepherd dog. Nolte replaced Alec Baldwin in this movie.
 * Christina Applegate as Catherine (Agent 47 at M.E.O.W.S.), a female Russian Blue cat, who becomes Diggs' partner.
 * Katt Williams as Seamus, a dim-witted, clumsy carrier pigeon.
 * Bette Midler as Kitty Galore, a Sphynx cat, formerly a M.E.O.W.S. agent named Ivana Clawyu.
 * Neil Patrick Harris as Lou, who is now an adult beagle and the head official of D.O.G. HQ. Harris replaced Tobey Maguire in this movie.
 * Sean Hayes as Mr. Tinkles, a Persian who is detained on Alcatraz Island.
 * Wallace Shawn as Calico, an Exotic Shorthair who works for Mr. Tinkles. Wallace Shawn replaced Jon Lovitz in this movie.
 * Roger Moore as Tab Lazenby, the head of M.E.O.W.S. HQ
 * Joe Pantoliano as Peek, a Chinese Crested. He is the tech specialist and head of Covert Ops at D.O.G. HQ.
 * Michael Clarke Duncan as Sam, an Old English Sheepdog.
 * Elizabeth Daily as Scrumptious, Kitty's pet albino mouse. She also voices one of Catherine's nieces and Patches.
 * Phil LaMarr as Paws, a robotic Maine Coon with metal teeth who works for Kitty. He also voices one of the Cat Spy Analysts.
 * Christopher L. Parson as Hep Cat / Cat Spy Analyst
 * Bonnie Cahoon as Dog HQ PA / Catherine's Niece
 * J.K. Simmons as Gruff K-9
 * Carlos Alazraqui as Cat Gunner
 * Michael Beattie as Angus MacDougall
 * Jeff Bennett as Duncan MacDougall
 * Grey DeLisle as Security English Bulldog / Catherine's niece / Cat Spy Anaylst
 * Roger Jackson as Fat Cat Inmate
 * Bumper Robinson as Cool Cat / Dog Killa / Cat Spy Analyst / Slim
 * André Sogliuzzo as Snobby K-9
 * Rick D. Wasserman as Rocky
 * Karen Strassman as French Poodle (uncredited)

Production
John Whitesell was attached to direct this film, but Brad Peyton replaced him as director. Visual effects were done by Rhythm and Hues.

Box office
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore earned $4,225,000 on opening day, and $12,279,363 on its opening weekend reaching #5 at the box office and having a $3,314 average from a very wide 3,705 theaters. In its second weekend, its drop was very similar to the first movie, retreating 44% to $6,902,116 to 7th place and lifting its total to $26,428,266 in 2 weeks. It held better in its third weekend, dropping 39% to $4,190,426 and remaining in the Top 10. The film closed on October 21, 2010 after 84 days of release, earning $43,585,753 domestically. Produced on an $85 million budget, the movie is considered a huge box office bomb, as it grossed less than half of the first Cats & Dogs, but it did manage to do better business than fellow summer talking animal competition Marmaduke. It earned an additional $69 million overseas for a worldwide total of $112.5 million. During its initial American theatre release, the film was preceded by the new 3D animated short film titled Coyote Falls with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 14% of 96 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 3.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Dull and unfunny, this inexplicable sequel offers little more than the spectacle of digitally rendered talking animals with celebrity voices." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 30 out of 100 based on 22 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale, down from the first film's "B+".

Joe Leydon of Variety wrote a positive-leaning review towards the film which reads "Nine years after Cats & Dogs fetched more than $200 million worldwide with its comic take on interspecies animosity, Warners is unleashing Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, a faster, funnier follow-up in which CGI-enhanced canines and felines effect a temporary truce to combat a common enemy." Critics cited the plot as recycled. Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club negatively reviewed the film's plot saying "it's still about a feline plot for world domination, and the slobbering secret agents who stand in the way." The film was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D", but it lost to The Last Airbender.

References to James Bond

 * Kitty Galore is a parody of the Bond girl Pussy Galore.
 * Paws is a parody of Jaws, complete with metal teeth.
 * The opening sequence is a parody of the James Bond title sequence, which has become a series staple. The sequence includes references to the sequences for GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, as well as the earlier Bond films. By coincidence, the film's opening theme is longtime Bond dame Shirley Bassey's cover of "Get the Party Started".
 * Tab Lazenby (a reference to George Lazenby, who played the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) is voiced by Roger Moore, who played the role of James Bond seven times.
 * Kitty has an albino mouse named Scrumptious, a reference to the white cat held by Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Video game
A video game was developed by 505 Games and it was released for the Nintendo DS on July 20, 2010. It is called Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore after the movie with the same name.

Home media
The DVD, Blu-ray, and 3D Blu-ray copies of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore were released on November 16, 2010.