Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank review

PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK: 

ANIMATED SAMURAI SPOOF ISN’T THAT “LEGENDARY”, BUT IT’S MOSTLY HARMLESS!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND NICKELODEON MOVIES

Hank the samurai in training and his sensei Jimbo in Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank

 

            The world of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles goes to the cats and dogs (I sh*t you not!) in Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, the new animated feature from Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stuart Little 1 and 2, The Forbidden Kingdom), Chris Bailey (Runaway Brain, Clerks: The Animated Series, Kim Possible), and Mark Koetsier. As previously mentioned, this film is essentially a remake of the 1974 Mel Brooks western spoof, Blazing Saddles except replace everyone with cats and dogs, change the setting from the old west to feudal Japan, and somehow turn an R-rated, extremely risqué, and controversial film into…a movie for children, even to the point where the working title was literally Blazing Samurai! 

            This film has a very interesting production history as it was originally conceived in 2010 by the co-founder of Sony Pictures Animation because of the popular trend of westernizing Asian films at the time. It would have revolved around a black samurai protecting an East Asian village but was changed to cats and dogs to make it more accessible and even had Chris Rock as a potential co-producer on it. 

            The film was finally picked up by Paramount and Nickelodeon in 2022 and changed the title to Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank as a nod to classic samurai/martial-arts films like Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon. The marketing also hid most of the Blazing Saddles references (Which is understandable because how do you market a movie that’s basically Blazing Saddles for Kids?). 

            I didn’t hear about the film until I saw the trailer before Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and it looked fine. It wasn’t an Emoji Movie scenario where I was appalled by its existence, I just thought it looked like a silly animated movie for little kids with nice animation, goofy humor, and a great voice cast. Shortly afterwards, I saw posts on social media about the film’s development and how it was a remake of Blazing Saddles, only to forget about that when I went to go see it. 

            As a movie aimed at children, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is mostly harmless and kids will probably enjoy the colorful animation, cartoony slapstick and fart jokes, and silly voices. If you’ve seen the trailers then you know what you’re getting into and while the concept of a child-friendly Blazing Saddles remake is baffling, surprisingly it isn’t Dead on Arrival. 

            The film follows Hank (voiced by Michael Cera-Superbad, Scott Pilgrim VS the World, The Lego Batman Movie), a bumbling beagle who aspires to be a samurai and finds himself in a town populated by cats called Kakamucho in desperate need of a hero. Hank befriends a tuxedo cat sensei known as Jimbo (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson-Pulp Fiction, The Incredibles 1 and 2, Marvel Cinematic Universe) who reluctantly agrees to train Hank to take on the role as fearsome samurai and team up with the cats to stop an evil warmonger named Ika Chu (voiced by Ricky Gervais-The Office (UK), Ghost Town, The Invention of Lying) from destroying their village…only one problem, the town hates dogs. 

            The film also features the voices of Blazing Saddles director Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs,Hotel Transylvania franchise) as Shogun, George Takei (Star Trek franchise, Kim Possible, Kubo and the Two Strings) as Ohga, Djimon Hounsou (Amistad, Blood Diamond, Marvel Cinematic Universe) as Sumo, Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Minions: The Rise of Gru) as Yuki, Gabriel Iglesias (Magic Mike 1 and 2, Coco, Ferdinand) as Chuck, Aasif Mandvi (The Siege, Spider-Man 2, Premium Rush) as Ichiro, and newcomers Kylie Kuioka as Emiko and Cathy Shim as Little Mama. 

            Overall, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is a passable diversion to show your kids with a few funny and clever moments for adults. But as a film inspired by one of the greatest and most influential spoof films of all time, it leaves a lot to be desired. 

            The plot is literally a retelling of Blazing Saddles beat-by-beat except as a samurai film instead of a parody of western movies. A town that’s being taken over by barbarians and an evil villain in charge wants to destroy said town, so he sends in an outsider who was about to be executed into the village to be the samurai (or sheriff), but the townspeople want nothing to do with him and with several jokes and other plot points repeated minus the profanity. 

The characters are also animated caricatures of their Blazing Saddles counterparts, Hank is Sheriff Bart, Jimbo is The Waco Kid, Ika Chu is Hedley LaMarr, Shogun is Gov. William J. Le Petomane (Even right down to the casting of Mel Brooks!), etc. and while that may be distracting to those familiar with the Mel Brooks film, most kids probably won’t make any connections to it and to the film’s credit, the voice acting is spot-on. 

Michael Cera and Samuel L. Jackson are an enjoyable team, Ricky Gervais gets some good laughs as the villain, and the voice cast as a whole does a great job at delivering their lines, even the ones that aren’t very funny. You can tell everyone’s having a fun time making this movie and even if the final product isn’t that great, it’s hard not to appreciate the passion they put into it. 

The jokes are very hit-or-miss, it relies on a lot of modern talk and pop-culture references (And not just for the stuff they’re satirizing!), you got your butt and fart jokes, and a climax that literally takes place on a giant toilet bowl called the Super Bowl (Haha, very funny!), I wouldn’t call these jokes bad, just dumb…but the little kids will probably laugh at them. With that said, there is a handful of jokes that are genuinely funny and reminiscent to Mel Brooks’ style of comedy. 

There’s one scene where the Sumo character wanders into town and knocks over a horse which then knocks over a bunch of other horses, Sumo then turns to another group of horses on the other side, one of them gulps, and knocks itself into the other horses. Another great bit is a joke involving a split screen where the characters literally run around it from one place to the next, that had me laughing on the floor and was a hysterical kid-friendly fourth-wall break. 

Even the dialogue has its moments of genius with one of the highlights being a scene where one of the cats is holding a gun and they’ve never seen one before. One of them asks if it’s dangerous, another cat responds with “Guns don’t kill cats, only cars and curiosity!”, and the cat asks, “What’s a car?”, and the other cat says “Careful, that’s too curious!”, wonderful moment. 

If you got kids who want to see it, they’ll probably have a great time and there are enough moments in it to make the parents glad they saw it with their children. But if you’re looking for something on par with Blazing Saddles or Zootopia, you might want to leave town.