Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank – Film Review

A down-on-his-luck hound finds himself in a town full of cats who need a hero to defend them from a ruthless villain’s evil plot to wipe their village off the map. With help from a reluctant trainer, the underdog must assume the role of fearsome samurai and team up with the felines to save the day. The only problem is — they all hate dogs.

It’s getting closer to the end of summer, which means that studios are now trying to push out as many kid-friendly films as possible while the youngsters are still on summer break, because once they get back to school, they won’t be able to watch movies in the theatre as often. This summer has been incredibly strange for kids movies seeing as we got Minions: The Rise of Gru and little else. Sure, we have DC League of Super-Pets coming out this week, but who knows how well that movie will perform? It’ll be hard to top Minions’ box office earnings, for sure.

Either way, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is the definition of a “meh” kids’ movie. I’m obviously not the target audience of this film, but even still, I can’t see too many children falling in love with this story that seems to be trying way too hard to copy the success of Kung Fu Panda. It’s an incredibly short movie that boasts an insanely talented voice cast, including the likes of Michael Cera, Ricky Gervais, George Takei, Djimon Hounsou, Michelle Yeoh, and Samuel L. Jackson.

With a cast that impressive, you’d probably think that this would be the best animated movie of all-time or something, but it’s far from it. To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure why this film’s cast is so stacked. The story is quite fun and cute, but it’s certainly nothing new. As a matter of fact, as far as stories go in film, this is one of the most straightforward I’ve seen in a kids’ movie in a long time. It’s highly predictable, but it’s harmless fun really.

The direction feels surprisingly coherent despite the fact that it was directed by three people, and all of the voice cast does a great job. Paws of Fury is simply too generic of a story to rise to levels of greatness. But I want to reiterate the fact that this movie isn’t awful by any means. If you take your kids to see it, they might have a fun time, but they will likely forget about it the next day. It doesn’t go deep like some kids movies do.

Show your kid something like Kubo and the Two Strings or Spirited Away if you think that they’re old enough for those kinds of stories. If not, there’s really no harm in taking them to see this movie, but your child can expect to see subjected to a film that never really tries too hard to be great.

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank features a stellar voice cast that is, unfortunately, stuck in an otherwise bland and generic animated film that children will likely forget about fairly quickly.