Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank’ on Prime Video, the Animated Kid-Friendly Version of ‘Blazing Saddles’ You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Need

Now on Prime Video, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is a kid-friendly animated sort-of-remake of classic Mel Brooks satire Blazing Saddles that changes the setting from the Old West to feudal Japan, replacing the Black-sheriff-in-a-white-town dynamic with dog-samurai-in-a-cat-town. Let’s see, that’s a shift in tone, target audience, visual format and species, a display of conceptual convolution that’s admittedly rather impressive! Notably, Brooks is a producer and has a supporting voice role in the cartoon, which even lists the original Blazing Saddles screenwriting team in the credits, so there better be some busting of the fourth wall, and the busting of farts, in this movie, right? Damn skippy.

PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In whatever iteration of Japan this is, CATS RULE and DOGS DROOL. Ika Chu (Ricky Gervais) is the jerk who rules this prefecture. He wants to raze the town of Kakamucho (get it? GET IT?) so he can further expand his palace and impress the Shogun (Brooks), who will arrive soon. Ika hires some private-security ninja goons to run Kakamucho’s samurai protector out of town, then replaces him with an inept buffoon, Hank (Michael Cera), a wannabe samurai who also happens to be a dog. Ika’s certain the townsfolk will murder Hank for being a dog and therefore leave the town defenseless, even though they were defenseless before Ika sent Hank there, so this is where we wonder if anyone put much thought into this screenplay because it’s a kids’ movie and six-year-olds don’t care about logical inconsistencies.

So Hank arrives and aligns with Jimbo (Samuel L. Jackson), a long-disgraced cat samurai who spends his time getting sauced on liquid catnip. Jimbo reluctantly agrees to teach Hank the ways of the warrior, which is Hank’s cue to ask if this is the training montage part of the movie. So not only does Hank get an opportunity to win over some prejudiced cats, but Jimbo gets a redemption arc, and they enjoy opportunities to talk about how these conflicts must be wrapped up in 85 minutes, “not counting the end credits,” during which we hear familiar voices and try to figure out who those voices belong to because doing so is more interesting than the plot. (FYI, those voices are Michelle Yeoh, George Takei, Gabriel Iglesias, Djimon Hounsou and Aasif Mandvi.) Meanwhile, we sit pat, just waiting for the fart bit. Where’s the fart bit. JUST GET TO THE FART BIT.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Paws of Fury is for all zero of you who wondered what would’ve happened had Mel Brooks directed Kung Fu Panda.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Welcome to episode 103 of Does Michelle Yeoh Class Up Every Project She’s In? In this week’s podcast, we’ll discuss Paws of Fury, where she enjoys about a half-dozen voiceover lines which do, indeed, albeit just barely, class up this project, assuming you’re keen enough to recognize her voice.

Memorable Dialogue: Jimbo delivers two real cringers that further my theory that Samuel L. Jackson won’t participate in a project if the script doesn’t allow him to uphold his brand, even if he has to water it down for youthful ears: “What the mother-father cocker-spaniel’s going on here!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: In the third act. That’s where the fart bit is. And that’s too long to wait for the fart bit. If you do grind through the are-we-there-yet watch-checking middle portion of the movie, and do indeed reach the fart bit, you’ll realize it wasn’t really worth it anyway. Many tripwires exist within Paws of Fury’s layers of conceptual convolution, all of which could be overlooked if anyone had written some of those things, y’know, whaddaya call ’em, right, ACTUAL JOKES, instead of cracking the whip on wheezy, overburdened cliches: self-referential look-we’re-in-a-movie quips, yes-sensei master-and-student Karate Kidisms, here’s-some-stuff-for-the-parents film references (West Side Story, Cats) and enough groanworthy cat and dog puns to populate a year’s worth of Bazooka Joe gum wrappers.

This is the type of movie that inevitably must conclude with a big climactic showdown and heavily manufactured action-peril shenanigans. It’s therefore telling that the former occurs on the lip of a giant toilet bowl, and the latter involves its flushing. Admittedly, all this jells quite nicely with the movie’s frequent poop- and pee-based comedy, so you can’t say the movie isn’t thematically consistent. Blazing Saddles still stands as a ripping satire (apologies for the phrasing) of racial prejudice; Paws of Fury offers the usual lukewarm accept-people-for-their-hearts-not-their-looks kid-flick platitudes. Younger audiences aren’t likely to be as critical; the animation is fine, the kitties are cute, it’s colorful, it moves quickly. None of that differentiates it from any other movies of its ilk, though.

Our Call: If Paws of Fury toots and no one’s there to hear it, will it still make a sound? SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.