"He's the boss, he's the pip. He's the championship. He's the most tip top."
This describes the titular kit himself, who's a lovely and perfect little guy. But these words also apply to Top Cat: The Movie, which is the singlemost refreshing adaptation of a dormant '60s cartoon IP I've seen. A low bar? Sure, but it's one tripped on by Scooby-Doo (twice!), Underdog, Yogi Bear, Smurfs, and too many more beloved Saturday morning pals to count.
(Thankfully, Hong Kong Phooey was spared, though not for lack of effort on Eddie Murphy's part.)
Somehow, this 2011 Mexican-Argentinian film penned by a career Cartoon Network writer avoids most of those films' pitfalls simply by having faith in Top Cat and his pals. It's a simple concept - let the merits of the original creations speak for themselves and play off the anachronisms of encroaching modernity - yet we know how far writers can stray from it. How is it possible to get it this right?
It starts with the art direction. Top Cat boasts a unique style accomplished by several studios that makes use of stereoscopic 3D and pseudo-2D cartooning to create a striking pop-up effect. When looking back at 2011 animation, the most popular examples such as Puss In Boots, Cars 2, and Tintin are so focused on 'prettiness' that things such as 'uniqueness' and 'experimentation' get thrown out the window for mollycoddled stylistic safety.
Where Illusion and Mirage arrive is akin to those cool CN bumpers from the mid-aughts, with 2D cartoons in "real world" 3D environments. Contemporary American critics obsessed with spotless, smoothed-out aesthetics rained hell on the film when it came here in 2013 with little care for context. Call me crazy, but I enjoy when a cartoon looks like a cartoon. I think that's part of the fun!
This is all to say nothing of the script, which is wickedly funny and strangely prescient. Top Cat is thrown in dog prison by a technocrat who's fired every politician and police officer, and has to 'pass' as a dog to get out and reconnect with his gang to topple the new regime. You think this is a weird, Madeline-coded read, but no - I've mostly stopped with those because explaining myself to y'all is exhausting. This is the actual text of the film, 14 years before our current American predicament.
The script's loaded with gender and identity jokes, none of which feel particularly dated nor mean. It also makes strategic use of Rob Schneider as a toadish conservative authoritarian who thinks he's a charming and handsome guy - which I believe is what they call "perfect casting" in the biz? Along the way, there are plenty of goofy visual gags and absurd capers that keep the moment-to-moment feeling fresh and free.
My chief complaints are in the sound and editing department. As far as the music goes, it fails to capture the whimsy and charm of the Hanna Barbera cartoons. No loud 'honks,' 'bonks, or 'awoogas' in the track, and that's a travesty itself - every HB adaptation should use that sound bank. If not, what are we even doing here? But it worsens with the score, which may as well not be here. The jazzy swing of the original show is lost in favor of bland uni-film musical Gerber food.
Editing-wise, my chief complaint lies in the pacing of it all - an avenue I typically don't single out for critique. Here, though, the hat fits. Top Cat is a weaker film on part of its strange, ambling pace that meanders from its focus far too often for my liking. What made the original show so compelling was its consistent, kinetic throughline communicated in concise and clean plots. I feel like this just missed that mark, instead favoring a style of writing that more closely resembles Tim McKeon's other work. That's not a clencher for me, because I do love his stuff - Adventure Time, Foster's, Juniper Lee. But it is missing something, and falls short of authenticity I'd like to see.
Yet I cannot, for all intents and purposes, understand the pure ire this movie attracts. Top Cat: The Movie is a hell of a time, bizarre and phantasmagorical in its absurdity, striking in its aesthetic choices, confident in its prescient and terrifying social observations. Buoyed by a central actor that seems to really know and love these alley cats, it's hard for a self-respecting TC fan like myself to turn a whisker up at this one.