Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (also known as Cats & Dogs 2 or Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore) is a 2010 spy comedy film directed by Brad Peyton in his directorial debut, produced by Andrew Lazar, Polly Johnsen, Greg Michael and Brent O'Connor and written by Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich based on the characters by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. The film stars Chris O'Donnell and Jack McBrayer with an ensemble voice cast of James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Katt Williams, Bette Midler, Neil Patrick Harris, Sean Hayes, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Clarke Duncan, Wallace Shawn and Roger Moore. The film is a stand-alone sequel to the 2001 film Cats & Dogs, with more emphasis on its animal characters than the previous film, and was released on July 30, 2010, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received mostly negative reviews from film critics and grossed $112.5 million on an $85 million budget.

Plot
Dogs and cats are secretly highly intelligent, capable of speech, and maintain spy agencies to protect the world. In Germany, a bloodhound named Rex discovers a Cocker Spaniel puppy stealing secret codes. The thief reveals herself to be Kitty Galore, a hairless Sphynx cat, in disguise. After she escapes, Rex alerts the agents that he has spotted her. At a San Francisco used car dealership, the mascot Crazy Carlito (dressed like Uncle Sam) plans to bomb the building. Police officer Shane Larson and his dog Diggs arrive on the scene. Diggs recklessly retrieves the detonator from Carlito but bites it in the process, blowing up the building. Butch and Lou, now a fully grown Beagle and the head of D.O.G. HQ, watch the incident. Lou wants to recruit Diggs as an agent, and Butch reluctantly agrees.

Diggs is locked in the police kennels to prevent further accidents. Butch brings him to D.O.G. HQ. After tracking down a pigeon named Seamus with valuable information, Diggs and Butch meet a M.E.O.W.S. (Mousers Enforcing Our World's Safety) agent named Catherine, who is also in pursuit of Seamus. Catherine reveals that Kitty Galore is a former M.E.O.W.S. agent named Ivana Clawyu who fell into a vat of hair removal cream in a cosmetics factory when a guard dog chased her while on a mission. Humiliated by her fellow agents, Kitty left M.E.O.W.S. and, thrown out by her former family due to her appearance, vowed revenge on cats, dogs and humans.

Lou forms an alliance with Tab Lazenby, head of M.E.O.W.S, to take down Kitty Galore. At a cat lady's home, the team discover that Calico, Mr. Tinkles' former aid, has been sending stolen technology to Kitty via pigeons. Diggs attacks Calico, who tries to drown the team in cat litter. They escape and interrogate Calico, who claims not to know Kitty's whereabouts but does know where his former boss is.

The team travels to Alcatraz, where Mr. Tinkles, mentally ill from his time with Mr. Mason's maid and her sisters, is confined. While he refuses to directly help them, he provides one clue: "A cat's eye reveals everything." When Kitty Galore learns that the cats and dogs have joined forces, she hires mercenaries Angus and Duncan MacDougall to kill Seamus on the boat returning from Alcatraz. Diggs subdues Angus and accidentally throws him overboard. Fed up with Diggs' mishaps completely ruining the mission, Butch dismisses him from the team and leaves with Seamus to salvage clues.

Catherine takes Diggs to her home where he meets her nieces who tickle his tummy. He's surprised they do not hate him as a dog, Catherine says they have not learned to hate dogs yet. He reveals that past experiences have made him unable to trust anyone, leading to difficulty following orders and spending most of his life in kennels. Catherine assures him if he continues to think that way, no one will be able to help him. Diggs realizes his error, and follows Catherine to M.E.O.W.S. HQ, where they learn with help from the clue Mr. Tinkles gave them that Kitty is hiding at a fairground with her new owner, amateur magician Chuck the Magnificent.

At the fair, Diggs and Catherine are captured by Kitty and her assistant, Paws. Kitty reveals her plot to transmit the "Call of the Wild", a frequency only dogs can hear that will make them hostile to humans. Kitty believes humans will abandon these unwanted dogs in kennels. Kitty tries to use the fair's flying swings ride as a satellite dish to broadcast the signal to an orbiting satellite. Diggs and Catherine escape after Diggs confess his feelings to Catherine and are joined by Butch and Seamus. Seamus presses a red button, believing it will shut down the ride, but he instead activates Kitty's signal. Dogs around the world begin to react. Paws battles them, revealing he is a robot; Diggs tricks him into biting the device's wires, destroying the satellite. Kitty's pet mouse Scrumptious, fed up with Kitty's abuse, launches the cat, leaving her covered in cotton candy and landing in Chuck's hat. With the mission a success, Diggs goes to live with Shane. Upon returning to H.Q., Diggs learns Mr. Tinkles has escaped prison with Calico.

In a post-credits scene, Tinkles is in paradise complaining about lacking deworming cream for his itching rear until Calico reminds him that he is still connected.

Cast

 * Chris O'Donnell as Shane Larson, a police officer who wants to adopt Diggs, but the police will not allow it.
 * Jack McBrayer as Chuck, Kitty's new owner and an aspiring but scatterbrained amateur magician.
 * Fred Armisen as Friedrich (cameo), a German worker who first finds Kitty Galore (disguised as a puppy) in a dumpster outside.
 * Paul Rodriguez as Crazy Carlito (cameo), the mad bomber who disguises as Uncle Sam.
 * Kiernan Shipka as a young girl who makes a cameo appearance when Diggs, Butch, Catherine, and Seamus are in the park. She is scared away by Seamus talking in front of her. She reappears on the ferry and at the fairground (both instances seeing Duncan talking and Kitty pleading for help respectively).
 * Pascale Hutton as Jackie Larson, Shane's wife.
 * Betty Phillips as Cat Lady

Voice cast

 * James Marsden as Diggs, an arrogant, dim-witted, rebellious, impulsive, and egotistical German Shepherd dog who becomes an agent of D.O.G and Catherine's partner.
 * Nick Nolte as Butch, a gruff Anatolian Shepherd dog. Nick Nolte replaced Alec Baldwin from the first film.
 * Christina Applegate as Catherine (Agent 47 at M.E.O.W.S.), a female Russian Blue cat, who becomes Diggs' partner.
 * Katt Williams as Seamus, a dim-witted, clumsy carrier pigeon.
 * Bette Midler as Kitty Galore, a cat of indeterminate breed resembling a Sphynx cat, formerly a M.E.O.W.S. agent named Ivana Clawyu. Kitty Galore is a parody of Pussy Galore, a Bond girl.
 * Neil Patrick Harris as Lou, who is now an adult beagle and the head official of D.O.G. HQ. Neil Patrick Harris replaced Tobey Maguire from the first film.
 * Sean Hayes as Mr. Tinkles, a Persian cat who is detained on Alcatraz Island.
 * Wallace Shawn as Calico, an Exotic Shorthair who works for Mr. Tinkles. Wallace Shawn replaced Jon Lovitz from the first film.
 * Roger Moore as Tab Lazenby, the head of M.E.O.W.S. HQ. Tab Lazenby's name is a spoof of actor George Lazenby who played James Bond (as did Roger Moore).
 * Joe Pantoliano as Peek, a Chinese Crested Dog. He is the tech specialist and head of Covert Ops at D.O.G. HQ.
 * Michael Clarke Duncan as Sam, an Old English Sheepdog.
 * Elizabeth Daily as Scrumptious, Kitty's pet albino mouse. She also voices one of Catherine's nieces and Patches.
 * Phil LaMarr as Paws, a robotic Maine Coon with metal teeth who works for Kitty. He also voices one of the Cat Spy Analysts. Paws is a parody of Jaws and the Terminator.
 * Len Morganti as Rex
 * Christopher L. Parson as Hep Cat / Cat Spy Analyst
 * Bonnie Cahoon as Dog HQ PA / Catherine's Niece
 * J.K. Simmons as Gruff K-9
 * Carlos Alazraqui as Cat Gunner
 * Michael Beattie as Angus MacDougall
 * Jeff Bennett as Duncan MacDougall
 * Grey DeLisle as Security English Bulldog / Catherine's niece / Cat Spy Analyst
 * Roger Jackson as Fat Cat Inmate
 * Bumper Robinson as Cool Cat / Dog Killa / Cat Spy Analyst / Slim
 * André Sogliuzzo as Snobby K-9
 * Rick D. Wasserman as Rocky
 * Karen Strassman as French Poodle (uncredited)

Box office
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore earned $4.2 million on opening day and $12.3 million on its opening weekend. It reached #5 at the box office and grossed an average of $3,314 average from 3,705 theaters. In its second weekend, its drop was very similar to the first film, retreating 44% to $6.9 million to 7th place and lifting its total to $26.4 million in two weeks. It held better in its third weekend, dropping 39% to $4.2 million and remaining in the Top 10. It closed on October 21, 2010, after 84 days of release, earning $43.6 million in the US on an $85 million budget. It earned an additional $69 million overseas for a worldwide total of $112.5 million. During its initial American theatre release, the film was preceded by the new 3D animated short film titled Coyote Falls with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 13% of 99 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 3.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Dull and unfunny, this inexplicable sequel offers little more than the spectacle of digitally rendered talking animals with celebrity voices." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 30 out of 100 based on 22 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, down from the first film's "B+".

Joe Leydon of Variety called it "a faster, funnier follow-up" to the original film. Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club negatively reviewed the film's plot, saying that "it's still about a feline plot for world domination, and the slobbering secret agents who stand in the way." The film was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D", but it lost to The Last Airbender.

Soundtrack
A score album was also released on CD from Varèse Sarabande Records.

Video game
A video game was developed by Engine Software and published by 505 Games and was released for the Nintendo DS on July 20, 2010.

Home media
The film was released on DVD on July 30, 2010. Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray versions were released on November 16.

Sequel
A third installment and stand-alone sequel, titled Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite!, features a new storyline taking place 10 years after the events of the previous film. However, unlike the previous two, the third film has been released as a straight-to-video release on digital on September 15, 2020, and on DVD and Blu-ray on October 13. It is also the only film that does not have any of the original cast members from the previous films. The new voice cast includes Melissa Rauch, Max Greenfield and George Lopez. It was directed by Sean McNamara, co-produced by Andrew Lazar and David Fliegel, and written by Scott Bindley. It was distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. The film received a nationwide theatrical release in Australia on September 24, and in the United Kingdom on October 2.