Toronto Sun A leap of faith in ‘Cats & Dogs 2’ By MICHAEL RECHTSHAFFEN, QMI AGENCY
LOS ANGELES — For celebs, a movie junket can be like a family reunion of sorts.
Sometimes a year or more may have passed since they worked together on the production in question and a junket setting gives them a chance to get caught up and share on-set memories.
But that wasn’t quite the case for three members of the voice cast of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, who found themselves getting together essentially for the first time in this Century City, Calif., hotel meeting room.
Combining live action, computer animation and sophisticated animatronics, the 3D movie, which opens nationally Friday and seriously ups the hi-tech ante from the 2001 original, once again relied on well-known humans to provide the vocal characterizations.
But while the plot has all those actual felines and canines joining forces to bring down a common enemy, the well known humans providing their voices were required to do their sessions solo, in a small recording booth.
As a result, while Bette Midler, Christina Applegate and James Marsden were certainly pleasant and cordial with one another, the gathering was missing that spark of easy camaraderie that comes out of the more conventional group experience.
“Actually, it’s not just isolating,” shares Midler, who plays the role of Kitty Galore, a vengeful hairless Egyptian Sphinx with a world domination complex, “it’s a little bit lonely because it’s just you in a dark room with a sketch of a character or sometimes a filled-in scene, but you don’t work with the other actors.”
For her part (that of Catherine, a reliable agent in the MEOWS spy organization), Christina Applegate found the experience admittedly took some adjustment.
“With a lot of other animated movies, they can animate thought in the eyes of the character, but these were real dogs and cats,” says Applegate, “For our characters there was very little that was enhanced. It really was a cat just sitting there, so we had to convey so much through the voice. It took me a minute to get used to it.”
It also took Marsden, who voices the role of rookie agent Diggs, a former police dog with ego issues, a few attempts to get his German Shepherd on.
“You’re in a dark room with a microphone sitting in front of you and not a lot of imagery to help you along,” explains Marsden. “We just had (director Brad Peyton) going, ‘Say that again, but just remember that what you’re yelling at that you can’t see right now is 50 metres ahead of you, so you have to be louder.’ It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
Applegate concurs, even though she had previously lent her voice to the lead Chipette in last winter’s computer-generated Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
“That was very different because you have to talk a lot higher than you normally speak and really slowly,” says Applegate. “And everything has to be incredibly exaggerated so you really feel ridiculous. It doesn’t sound like you but you try to put as much personality as you can into it, so when they speed it up it sounds like something perky and sassy.
Speaking of perky and sassy, Midler, whose prior animation experience involved playing a pampered poodle in 1988’s Oliver & Company, is admittedly disappointed that fellow Cats & Dogs castmate, Nick Nolte (who voices the part of Butch, a gruff DOGS agent) was an unexplained, last minute no-show, thereby preventing a mini Down and Out in Beverly Hills reunion.
“I was looking forward to seeing Nick,” laments Midler. “I hadn’t seen him in a long time and he’s so sensational in this movie. I mean, I’m not enough of a dog person, but is that like a lab?”
Director Peyton informs her it was an Anatolian Shepherd.
“Oh my God, well, he is that dog,” proclaims Midler, who then turns to her right.
“Were you in the room with him?” she asks Marsden.
“No, I have yet to meet him,” he says of the person who plays his on-screen mentor.
“Well, we all feel the same way,” says Midler. “We have yet to meet him.”
One hour in and finally a genuine bonding moment — over a guy who isn’t even there.
One giant leap forward
The last time director Brad Peyton hosted a screening, the occasion was his 2002 Gothic comedy Evelyn: The Cutest Evil Dead Girl, a nine-minute short with a similarly compact budget of $16,000.
Cut to a hot summer July evening in Hollywood, with the Gander, Newfoundland native introducing the premiere of his first feature, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, boasting 82 minutes of state-of-the-art robotics, puppetry and computer animation, in 3D no less, and a rumoured budget approaching $150 million.
Not to mention dozens of real-life dogs and cats and an all-star voice cast including Bette Midler, Christina Applegate, Neil Patrick Harris, Sean Hayes, Nick Nolte, James Marsden, Michael Clarke Duncan and Roger Moore.
Talk about your daunting leaps.
“When you’re directing your first movie, there’s this list of things you’re not supposed to do,” laughs Peyton, referencing kids and animals, along with robots, explosions and heavy visual effects. “But I had a really supportive group and a lot of people I was collaborating with that were really fun.”
Still, he doesn’t deny there were some trying times, including getting two of his leads to do something as simple as walking and then looking over at something off-screen.
“It’s pretty simple stuff until you realize that dogs don’t walk and look,” says Peyton. “They walk. And stop. And look. I went to the camera operator and said, “Can’t we smooth this out? And he said, ‘Brad, it’s a German Shepherd.’ He’s like, ‘I shot Denzel Washington and after a week I could understand how Denzel was going to move. Every day the dog moves differently, Brad.'”
But Peyton, whose modest credits also include the stop-motion claymation TV series, What It’s Like Being Alone, hung in there until every dog (and cat) had its day.
“In our first meeting I told Brad it’s going to be a very long road and animals are tricky,” recalls producer Andrew Lazar. “So I did warn him. But we’re really, really blessed. Brad has been very patient.”
That patience is being rewarded even before the movie puts its box office clout to the test this Friday, with Warner Bros. giving Peyton another 3D sequel assignment — the follow-up to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Peyton confirms the new edition will revolve around Josh Hutcherson’s character — he played the part of Brendan Fraser’s nephew in the first movie — and will contain elements from Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island.
No word yet on the involvement of any kitties or doggies.
