The popular 1980s animated TV series has been given a CGI update, with gallant, sword-wielding hero Dogtanian (Tomas Ayuso) now rendered in plasticky, squidgy 3D. A riff on Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers, the young Dogtanian journeys from 17th-century Béarn to Paris in the hope of becoming one of Louis XIII’s guard dogs – a “muskehound” – and clearing his disgraced father’s name.
There’s a diamond heist and a gruff-voiced, double-crossing mouse. In this cartoon universe, dogs ride horses and walk on their hind legs; cats such as Milady de Winter (Elisabeth Gray) wear corsets and are, of course, evil. The film’s world of Beauty and the Beast-style pastel houses and swashbuckling masculinity is unsophisticated, if not totally unenjoyable, and clearly geared towards very young children.
