Movie Thoughts: Charlie the Wonderdog (2025)

 

• Released: January 16th, 2025
• Directed by: Shea Wageman
• Running time: 1h 35min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A dog and a cat are captured by aliens and given superpowers. The dog, Charlie, uses these powers for good, while the cat, Puddy, uses them for evil. The two seem to be destined to become arch-rivals. 

My Thoughts

Just felt like seeing a movie today and you know that I'll check out most xenofiction movies I come across, this included. Even if it isn't very good. 

And yeah, this is sadly not a good film. I've seen a few people call it awful, and there I disagree. There is still some elements here that do somewhat work. But overall, it's just not a great film. I wouldn't recommend it.

For a younger audience this is probably fine. It'll keep them entertained, there's some humor and action and good lessons to keep them entertained. The characters also aren't terrible (at least, Charlie and Danny aren't). The animation is pretty nice-looking, not fantastic but it looks polished enough.

But that's where my praise for this movie has to end. Because it's also just pretty messy. First of all, the alien subplot is completely forgotten about for pretty much an hour. It happens early on in the movie, then the movie seems to drop it, only for it to come back in the last five-ten minutes or so. This made the movie feel unbalanced. Like what was this trying to be, an alien movie? A superhero movie? Both? Pick a lane and stick to it because right now this balancing act looks terrible.

I also found the character of Puddy to be really annoying and honestly just not at all a compelling villain. His motivation is literally that he hates dogs and that Charlie's dog food is so prevalent in the supermarkets. Laaaame. The movie also can't resist making a few fatphobic jokes regarding him. Yoohoo (sarcasm). It also doesn't help that the film keep introducing random side characters on the side of evil who are then completely forgotten about. Seriously, what even happened to the kitten and the dog who thinks he's a cat, or the other minion-cats? They just kinda vanish from the plot with no lasting impact whatsoever.

I thought that the designs for the aliens were really boring and uninspired. Come on, man, these are aliens, you can do anything with these designs. But instead we just get boring green tentacle blobs.

I'm not too fond of the ending implying that Danny loves Charlie more as a superhero (when he's young and able to talk and has superpowers) than if he's just an old regular dog. That kinda makes it seem like he didn't care that much about Charlie back when he was just an old, normal dog. If Danny really loved his pet so much, him just being Charlie (including being old and non-super) should be enough. 

The audio editing also wasn't great. There was one scene taking place at night where the cricket sounds are so loud in the theater it legit hurt my ears.  

This is also one in a long line of dog-movies that really seems to be anti-cat. I don't like this endless demonization of cats that's going on in children's animal movies, man. It was maybe new at first, but it's a tired trope by now. It'd have helped if there were some cats on the side of good, but there literally aren't any. All cats (and one dog) are evil, that's it. 

I don't know. I don't hate this film, but it's just not good. It's pretty harmless, but there's better films to show young viewers.