Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010)

There is a moment in this 2010 sequel when a hairless Sphynx cat explains that a vat of depilatory cream cost her a career, a family, and her dignity, and that the world will pay. This is the emotional engine of the picture. The dogs and cats of the world, we learn, run competing spy agencies, and a rogue operative named Kitty Galore has decided to turn humanity against its pets by broadcasting a frequency only dogs can hear. A German Shepherd with impulse control problems joins the canine outfit, is paired with a Russian Blue agent, and learns about trust. The stakes are global. The tone is slapstick. The franchise had already established that animals are smarter than we are, and this installment simply adds a satellite dish shaped like a carnival ride.

The voice cast is pleasant and unremarkable, stocked with familiar names doing familiar work, and a handful of performers of color appear in supporting roles without the film making any particular fuss about it. That is the extent of the cultural ambition on display. Christina Applegate's Catherine is competent and quick with a retort, and the villain is a woman, which counts for something until you notice that the script frames both of them through courtship and vanity. Kitty Galore's baldness is the joke and the wound, treated as a source of shame that justifies her villainy, so the film lands on the opposite shore from any message about bodies or self-acceptance.

What remains is a brisk, weightless spy caper that lectures nobody about anything. It has no interest in the climate, in class, in history, or in the inner lives of its human owners, who exist mainly to be outwitted. Mr. Tinkles is declared mentally ill and used as a punchline. The whole enterprise is a marketing exercise with fur, and it knows it. As a specimen of social consciousness, it is inert. As a way to occupy a child for eighty-two minutes, it is adequate, which may be the kindest thing anyone has said about it since 2010.