Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (2012)

It's hard to think of a film title that was more ludicrous than this in 2021. Admittedly, the series has been around for years, first being released in the early eighties in Japan. This film conversion is, from what I can gather, the story of the series (The Three Musketeers essentially) in a more compact form. As you might have guessed, I saw this at a movies for juniors screening at a local cinema, and for the first forty minutes or so I felt that had I looked around I would have been met with similar looks of bafflement or bewilderment that my own face presumably displayed from fellow parents. Those first forty minutes were a real chore although it may not have helped that I'm not familiar with the series. The animation seemed particularly shoddy, lazy even, and the main character Dartanian is not a likeable lead. However, once you get used to it and accept all its (many) faults, you do forgive it slightly. However, having to watch several poorly drawn hounds prancing about on screen for nearly ninety minutes like total berks with wildly high pitched voices is enough to stretch anyone's patience. It's presumably aimed at the younger children but from some of the rotten animation I've seen recently (namely the Fireman Sam and Thomas The Tank Engine reboots with truly dreadful animation) this effort won't seem any worse than normal for them. There is a pretty cool sequence towards the end on two ships, and by that point you've mostly got used to Dogtanian. My daughter was three at the time, and she had her patience tested towards the end, focusing on her pic a mix (that incidentally cost more than both our tickets put together) and we knew we were just passing the time until the following week when The Paw Patrol movie hit theatre. I for one couldn't wait to exit this, and walk into that. Uploading this review this morning several years on from going to see it, I asked my daughter what she thought of the film. "Really bad" was her response. 3.2/10