There is a Junior PAW Patrol. I want you to let that sink in knowing the PAW Patrol consists entirely of puppies. So … the junior patrol … are they fetuses? Ova? The outtakes from some of the more adult moments in Strays? It would be nice if this made more sense than none.
Look, I’ve watched cartoons my whole life. I’ve watched a coyote return from certain death roughly 4,000 times. I’ve seen a rogue moose and squirrel go undercover. I’ve seen a wildly beloved princess sing about how callous she’s gonna be and then turn her entire world into ice. But this. This doesn’t make any sense.
PAW Patrol is the social services arm of Adventure City including all police and rescue efforts. And they’re puppies. Well, except for their handler, who is a young boy with a headset and puppy pajamas. So I guess Adventure City is pretty much on the honor system, huh? I mean, you got one cop, and he’s a puppy, and last film he had performance issues. OK. This particular edition focuses on Skyy (voice of McKenna Grace), the team’s aviator. Skyy -like the vodka- is a puppy cockapoo who has anxiety issues resulting from being the runt of the litter. And as a result, she almost dooms the entire city. Huh, you let your shattered ego threaten an entire populace … how Trumpian of you.
The basic plot is evil astronomer – points for that, PAW Patrol—Victoria Vance (Taraji P. Henson) steals a giant electro-magnet from a junkyard, then uses it to draw meteors to Earth, where havoc is wreaked. Yeah, that’s not how astrophysics works, like, at all, but my cartoon-loving inner child can forgive that gross and inaccurate exaggeration because Americans and science go together like MAGA and manners.
PAW Patrol headquarters is destroyed by the initial meteor. Luckily, our heroes escaped and discovered the crystals within the meteorite which yielded superpowers to compensate for all the busted equipment.
Well, now this is just a cheap rip-off. You had something unique, PAW Patrol. It was silly and ridiculous, but it was unique. But you turned that into yet another cheap superhero film. And this was cheaper than cheap. Superpowers were introduced and never heard from again. One puppy suddenly has the ability to generate fire. Look, I don’t care if you are a puppy; once you become a flame thrower, you’re a villain. Not sure where the story was supposed to go from there. One puppy didn’t even get powers, which was alluded to several times, but never resolved. She becomes boss of the junior PAW Patrol, an experimental program.
Ah. But all of that becomes irrelevant when Skyy hoarks all the magic power-granting crystals in the dead of night and sneaks off to go retrieve her own lost crystal, stolen fair-and-square by Victoria … then Skyy loses all of the other 
magic crystals in one go … in another scene that doesn’t really make sense when you think about it. Boy, kid, you sure learned a lot about friendship and sharing and teamwork at PAW Central, huh?
At the end of this one. I’m left questioning where is the puppy bureaucracy? And the puppy legal resources? You can’t have puppy rescue and puppy po-po without having some sort of puppy infrastructure, yes? Is there a puppy IA for when the team, how shall I put this … screws the pooch? Who puppy polices the puppy police?
Look, I know I’m not the target audience. I’m not seven and I no longer want to be Batman when I grow up. Now, I want to be Iron Man. Seriously, though, I get that I’m not the person most interested in puppy law enforcement, but if I were, I’d still have questions. And I am decidedly unimpressed with where PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie plot went – you made all the search and rescue puppies into superheroes which is an extremely tired plot point in 2023, and then you did next-to-nothing with the superpowers themselves. What’s the point of this film? You have a sweet message about self-belief coming from the character who should have relied on friends and besides that, what? I don’t think this is even a great film for kids.
There once was a dog named Skyy
Her runtiness will bring a tear to your eye
This inferiority ‘plex
Is not a winning flex
And left me ultimately probing, “why?”
Rated PG, 88 Minutes
Director: Cal Brunker
Writer: Cal Brunker, Bob Barlen, Shane Morris
Genre: The indelicate universe of puppy-based social services
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Your addicted small child
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Their parent
