FETCH A FALLING STAR

Opening in theaters this weekend:

PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie--"They're cute little pups that drive around in cars. I know it sounds weird, but just go with it." So says a character near the beginning of this second PAW Patrol feature, by way of describing the premise.

More specifically: The little pups live in palatial digs in "Adventure City," where each of them specializes in some form or other, vaguely breed-appropriate, of public safety. Chase the German Shepherd is a police dog; Marshall the Dalmatian is a firefighter; Skye the Cockapoo pilots a rescue helicopter; Bulldog Rubble does construction and demo; Zuma the Lab does water rescues, mutt Rocky handles recycling, and Liberty the Dachshund, introduced in 2021's PAW Patrol: The Movie, has a gift for training the members of the Junior Patrollers, a trio of Pomeranians. Ryder is the human boy who leads the gang.

I'll confess that moment-to-moment, I have some trouble keeping them all straight in my mind; the characters don't, for me, have terribly distinct personalities. But to their intended audience, the pups have been beloved figures since the Canadian TV cartoon, developed by Keith Chapman of Bob the Builder fame, was launched on Nickelodeon in 2013.

If you thought it was weird before, wait until you get a load of Mighty Movie. The story takes a sci-fi/fantasy twist this time that puts it more in the realm of a Marvel or Power Rangers flick than a Boy-and-his-Anthropomorphic-Dogs story. Drawn in from space by a mad scientist villain with a magnet, a meteor crash lands in Adventure City, and fragments from it give the pups superpowers. Some of these seemed counterintuitive to me. Marshall, for instance, gains the power to conjure fire from his paws; shouldn't he command water or flame-retardant foam or something?

Anyway, as with the first feature, The Mighty Movie is not an experience to seek out if you don't have a five-year-old who requires it, but it's not disagreeable to sit through if you do get stuck at it. The dialogue has funny, self-aware touches, including another fourth wall gag about the film's transparent merchandising strategy. The voice cast includes some name players, including Serena Williams, Kristen Bell, James Marsden, Chris Rock and most notably Taraji P. Henson as the rather chic, green-haired mad scientist.

Ron Pardo is also back, as Humdinger, Adventure City's narcissistic former mayor. I thought perhaps the first film was using the character to reference a certain real world public figure; my suspicion was strengthened in Mighty Movie when Humdinger, sensing public hostility toward him, remarks "This is why I hate free and fair elections."

Humdinger's entourage of cats seems intended as further evidence of his villainy. A suggestion: In the spirit of inter-species equity and amity, perhaps in the next PAW Patrol movie a heroic kitty should be introduced to the team. Cats have paws too, after all.