Mark Reviews Movies: PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 15, 2022

It takes some guts to remake a classic, and it takes some real courage or folly to re-imagine a classic film as something else entirely. It's not apparent from the beginning of Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, but this animated movie, which is decidedly aimed at kids, is a re-working of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, which most definitely isn't.

To be fair, an opening theme song, detailing the adventures of a "Blazing Samurai," is a bit of a giveaway, and it's not as if screenwriters Ed Stone and Nate Hopper are up to any kind of funny business, such as trying to pass off this material as some kind of original idea. Brooks and all of his co-writers on the 1974 film (including Richard Pryor) are credited here. Additionally, the comedy maestro himself more or less reprises the role he played in his own film—this time, not as a goofy and absent-minded (except when it comes to certain parts of women's anatomy) governor, but as an aging and pun-happy cat shogun.

Brooks lending his stamp of approval clearly has its benefits. That's especially true in the introductory sections of this movie, when the unexpected surprise of its source material is still present. During that early stretch, the filmmakers seem to have a decent grip on translating a rowdy, raunchy, and adult comedy about the absurdity of prejudice into kid-friendly, self-aware, and gag-filled comedy about cats being prejudiced about a visiting dog. It shows some promise, and then screenwriters, as well as the trio of directors (Chris Bailey, Mark Koetsier, and Rob Minkoff), lose their comedic bearings.

The premise and plot essentially remain the same as in the original film—with the obvious changes being that's about cats and a dog and that the genre has shifted from a Western to a samurai tale. There's a small town called Kakamucho in a valley, and it's in the way of the view of the newly constructed palace of the villainous Ika Chu (voice of Ricky Gervais).

The dastardly feline wants the inhabitants to leave and town wiped off the map, but his boss the Shogun (voiced by Brooks) has already ordered Ika Chu to send a new samurai protector to the village (The last one runs off at the first sign of trouble). The villain decides to use the assignment in his favor—by sending Hank (voice of Michael Cera), a beagle who has come to this land of cats to learn to become a samurai warrior. If the cat inhabitants of Kakamucho see a dog in their town, they'll surely kill Hank, and killing a samurai, even a dog, is a crime in these parts.

If the setup and story are wholly familiar, so, too, are a good number of the jokes (although all of it almost certainly will be new to the younger members of the audience). There's the foolish executioner. The announcement of Hank's arrival in town as the new samurai is interpreted by a loud noise, leading everyone to miss an important detail about him. The village is terrorized by bandits, ninjas, and the imposing mountain of a cat named Sumo (voice of Djimon Hounou), who punches a horse to mark his arrival. A dinner consisting of beans leads to a lot of flatulence around some fire.

A couple unique gags are clever, such as the Shogun "calling" Ika Chu by way of a cross-country game of telephone. Others show that, when filmmakers are dealing with proven material, it's probably best to stick to what they know already works.

That philosophy probably could be aimed at the plot here, too, which has been re-configured to fit into a formulaic mold that gradually—and, then, completely—overwhelms the movie's comedic intentions. Hank is aided by former samurai Jimbo (voice of Samuel L. Jackson), who's now a shell of his former glory, haunted by a mistake and getting drunk on catnip. Jimbo is less a partner and ally and more a mentor for Hank, who gets a training montage (a fact that's acknowledged, which isn't the same as making a worthwhile gag of the cliché) and learns to fight and proves himself to the townsfolk and has that brief period of defeat, before rallying the town against Ika Chu's gang and getting into a one-on-one battle with the villain.

In Brooks' film, the formulaic Western plotting was just an excuse for joke after joke, setpiece after comic setpiece, and dissection of racism after pointed mocking of racists. The filmmakers here, of course, accurately replicate the narrative beats, but in making the plot the focus and taking it a bit too seriously, they've left little room for any comic invention to call their own. As for the message about and satirizing of prejudice, it's an afterthought, rendered almost non-existent by the time the story breezes past its comedic potential by emphasizing the plot points and the action scenes.

Credit is due to the makers of Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, obviously, for trying something different (even if that "something different" technically isn't anything new at all). They simply lose the joke and the point—which mostly consists of the jokes, after all—along the way.

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