I've been excited about _Cats and Dogs_ since I caught the hilarious trailer months ago. Having now wasted a glorious Saturday afternoon (during Calgary Stampede week no less, when I could have been doing something REALLY enjoyable), I feel immensely cheated. The trailer reveals that the film has some good lines and that it entails an intriguing and pregnant premise. What the trailer doesn't show is the almost non-stop dreck that litters and ruins the rest of the film. I am talking about an unnecessary, distracting, obligatory and unconvincing sentimentality to the whole thing. Three cliched aspects are especially annoying:<br /><br />1. The dad (Jeff Goldblum, absolutely sleepwalking) is a scientist who, despite the fact that he works at home, is apparently neglectful of his so. We know this because of his inattention to junior's soccer tryouts. This "tension" lends to some appalling "resolution" (sorry for the slight spoiler but if you can't see this coming you lack a pulse) that has nothing at all to do with cats or dogs and is not remotely humourous.<br /><br />2. Lou the beagle has not only to help save the world from the cats- he also has to earn the love of junior, who (in an unspeakably stupid and unbelievable scene) rejects the dog initially- as if ANY little kid would reject a darling beagle puppy, but the "plot" requires this kind of stuptidity. Why can't the movie focus on the battle at hand instead of attempting this sentimentality, complete with soaring violins? ICK!<br /><br />3. For no fathomable reason whatsoever, a "stray" voiced by poor Susan Sarandon shows up as the love interest for the grizzled head dog, Lou's mentor. Ah. So the general has a romantic past- WHAT was the POINT of that??<br /><br />I would add that there were some annoyances typical of a lot of "family" films that most viewers apparently accept uncritically but that set my teeth on edge:<br /><br />1. The quirky scientist, with no apparent means of financial support and his realtor wife live in a house that is easily worth a million dollars, on a massive lot with impeccably maintained gardens. Doesn't this depiction of social class bother anybody but me?<br /><br />2. Susan Sarandon's "stray" is clearly a pure-bred- a saluki I think. Oh the idle rich- how dare they abandon a $3000 dog? Do Hollywood writers- who clearly themselves come overwhelmingly from the privileged classes- have any idea how real people live, especially how their purported characters might live?<br /><br />I have to add as a Canadian (one who recently immigrated here from the US) that I can never live down, or understand, the need for films like this one, shot in Victoria, BC has to be set in America- one of the first scenes shows a USPS letter box and one Russian cat maligns "these American" security systems. NOTHING in the movie hinges on American-ness in any way, so why not just set the damn thing in BC? So producers of these films believe that Americans would refuse to see a movie set where it is actually filmed?