PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023)

The film arrives as the second theatrical outing for a franchise about dogs who perform municipal services, and it opens with a meteor, seven crystals, and a merchandising plan. The voice cast reads like the seating chart at a charity gala: Taraji P. Henson, Marsai Martin, Serena Williams, Chris Rock, Kim Kardashian. That diversity is genuine and entirely unremarked upon, which is its own quiet accomplishment. The characters, however, are dogs. We score what is on the screen, not what is on the call sheet.

The narrative belongs to Skye, the runt of her litter, too small to be adopted, rescued from a blizzard by a boy in a coat. She gains flight and strength, loses both to a villain, and ultimately flies into the sky to punch meteors one at a time. It is a female empowerment arc, mild and unaccompanied by a manifesto. A body-positivity reading is available to anyone willing to squint: the film states that size does not determine worth, then moves on to the next action sequence. Racial commentary is absent. So is any environmental sermon, any eat-the-rich sentiment, any neurodivergent character, and any revisionist account of history. The villains are a disgraced scientist and a mayor, which constitutes a class politics of a sort, though not the sort anyone is tallying.

A gentle moral remains, that small heroes can make a difference, delivered in the register of a bedtime story. The film does not lecture. It has no interest in correcting the adults in the room. It wants to sell toys and briefly reassure children, and it does both with efficiency. The progressive pulse here is faint, a matter of casting and a runt's redemption. That is the whole of it.