Top Cat: The Movie

Top Cat: The Movie (also known in Spanish as Don Gato y su Pandilla, literally "Top Cat and His Gang") is a 2011 3D Mexican-Argentine flash animated family action comedy film based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, Top Cat, which ran from 1961 to 1962 on ABC in the United States. It is the twenty-seventh Warner Animation Group film. The film was produced by Ánima Estudios and Illusion Studios and was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Top Cat: The Movie premiered in Mexico in 2D and 3D theaters on September 16, 2011. It was a huge commercial success, earning $43,536,074 pesos on its opening weekend at the domestic box office and became one of the biggest box-office openings in Mexican cinema history.

The English version was released in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2012, distributed by Vertigo Films, in RealD 3D and 2D theaters. It was largely panned from critics, but was a moderate box-office success, grossing £2,824,893, the highest amount for a Mexican production. The film had a limited release in the United States on August 2, 2013, starring the voices of Rob Schneider and Danny Trejo.

A computer-animated prequel to the film and the series, titled Top Cat Begins, was released on October 30, 2018.

Plotedit | edit source
During lunch with Benny, Top Cat spots a female cat walking by them. Excusing himself, Top Cat quickly runs after the female cat, interrupted by Griswald, but soon gets him out of the way and meets up with the female cat, who introduces herself as Trixie. While she finds him amusing, an alley cat isn't her type.

At the alley, Top Cat catches news of the Maharajah of Peekajoo, known for his generosity and his rubies are just what Top Cat needs to impress Trixie. Top Cat and his gang head to the Connity Hall to meet the Maharajah, running into an obnoxious man named Lou Strickland. The gang steal his tickets and get him sent away. While the gang distract Officer Dibble who is the Maharaja's escort, Top Cat makes a bet with the Maharaja and gets out of him a Maharaja Talk 5000 device with many functions, as the Maharaja hasn't any rubies.

The next morning, Officer Dibble is summoned to the police station to work for the Chief's son-in-law Strickland, who is taking over for the retired Chief. Strickland has replaced the staff with robots which he believes are more competent. Top Cat thwarts Strickland's attempt to evict him, preventing Strickland from getting the Mayor's funding for a robot police army. Strickland uses Trixie to keep Top Cat away from the alley while he carries his out his plan. Top Cat returns to the alley getting shunned by his gang, arrested by police and after an unfair trial, convicted to the Dog Jail on charge of stealing money from an orphanage.

With the arrest of Top Cat, Strickland is granted the Mayor's funding and establishes a robot police army and a major scale surveillance camera system which restricts privacy for the city. Meanwhile, Top Cat tries to keep a low profile in dog jail but later becomes popular having turned the jail into a paradise for the convicts. As for Top Cat's gang they are struggling and begin to express their disbelief in him, which Top Cat notices from the one of the security cameras.

Strickland abuses his authority and starts coming up with ridiculous laws to take absurd amounts of money off people for every thing they do, intending to spend it on making himself even more 'handsome'. Tired of Strickland's tyranny, Trixie quits her job, Strickland fires her and turns to Officer Dibble and shows him evidence that a robot Top Cat sent by Strickland robbed the orphanage proving Top Cat's innocence. However, Strickland arrives and reveals his true intentions to Dibble, and that he's not the old chief's son-in-law. Dibble escapes to pass this to Top Cat's gang, but Trixie is captured by the police robots.

After Dibble tells the gang what really happened, they all head for Big Gus to help them break Top Cat out of prison, as he owes Top Cat. Big Gus leads them through an underground passage to the dog jail and leaves. The gang apologises for their doubts about Top Cat. With their cover blown by the dogs knowing they've got cats with them, the gang and Dibble escape through a sewer hole arriving at Strickland's HQ.

The gang infiltrate the building in robot guises finding Strickland has imprisoned everyone in the city and stolen the city's cash. While Dibble distracts Strickland, the gang under the guise of robots make their way to Strickland's control centre, but Top Cat's gang are locked in Strickland's vault having tripped a silent alarm, Top Cat remaining outside. When Strickland arrives, he orders Top Cat to be annihilated by the robots. As a single robot enters, Top Cat realises the whole security system was manufactured by the Maharajah of Pookajee. Top Cat takes out the Maharajah Talk 5000 which presumably controls all robots to get Strickland. In panic, Strickland self-destructs the robot army except the single one, revealed to be Fancy-Fancy still in his robot guise. Everyone imprisoned and Top Cat's gang is released in the self-destruction process. Strickland is rendered helpless and Dibble arrests him and (on Top Cat's suggestion) sentences him to the Dog Jail.

Top Cat and Trixie renew their relationship, Officer Dibble is promoted as the new Chief of Police, the gang enjoy themselves, and finally Griswald asks for a place in Top Cat's gang, which Top Cat accepts.

English cast[edit]
The English-language version was also included in the special features in the Mexican DVD release.

Developmentedit | edit source
On Feb­ru­ary 26, 2011, Warner Bros. Pic­tures Mex­ico, Ánima Es­tu­dios, Il­lu­sion Stu­dios an­nounced that the film would be in pro­duc­tion to cel­e­brate the show's 50th anniversary, which took a total of 34 months to develop.

Writingedit | edit source
While the pro­duc­tion of the film mainly took place in Mex­ico, Warner Bros. sug­gested that the film was writ­ten by Amer­i­cans, when Tim­o­thy McK­eon and Kevin Sec­cia wanted to write a fa­mil­iar story to match the spirit of the orig­i­nal TV se­ries. Be­fore writ­ing the screen­play, they re­viewed the show's set of the 1960s and wrote sev­eral ver­sions of the script until fin­ishing the final draft which took them six months to write. Jesús Guzmán, a Mex­i­can co­me­dian and actor who pro­vides the Span­ish voice of Demostenes (Brain), adapted and trans­lated the script in Spanish.

Animationedit | edit source
It was orig­i­nally ru­mored to be a live-ac­tion/CGI hy­brid, but it was later con­firmed to be a 2D/CG an­i­mated feature. An­i­mated in Adobe Flash with com­puter an­i­mated back­grounds, the an­i­ma­tion was done by Ánima Es­tu­dios in Mex­ico, while post-pro­duc­tion (in­clud­ing the CGI back­grounds) and stereo­scopic 3D ser­vices were done at Il­lu­sion Stu­dios in Ar­gentina.

Background development and settingedit | edit source
Al­berto Mar, the film's di­rec­tor, did a scout­ing in New York City in 2011 and took pic­tures of the city's build­ings, al­leys, and drains. He also used lo­ca­tions that were not fea­tured in the TV se­ries, such as Times Square.

Character developmentedit | edit source
Dur­ing char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment, all of the film's char­ac­ters had to be ap­proved by Warner Bros. An­i­ma­tion. The goal was for the char­ac­ters to look like they were drawn in style of other Hanna-Bar­bera works. Ánima Es­tu­dios cre­ated new char­ac­ters that were not fea­tured in the se­ries, such as Trixie, Lucas Buen­rostro (Lou Strick­land), the army of ro­bots, and over 100 in­ci­den­tal characters.

Releaseedit | edit source
This film was re­leased the­atri­cally in Mex­ico and parts of South Amer­ica on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2011 in Dig­i­tal 3D and reg­u­lar 2D for­mat. The film's teaser pre­miered on April 15, 2011 and was shown dur­ing the Mex­i­can screen­ings of Hop. On Jan­u­ary 23, 2012, Ver­tigo Films an­nounced that the film would be re­leased in the United King­dom on June 1, 2012 (for­merly Au­gust 20, 2012) in 2D, Dig­i­tal 3D, and RealD 3D the­aters. A UK teaser trailer was re­leased on April 5, 2012. The film was re­leased in se­lect the­aters and VOD in the United States from Viva Pic­tures on Au­gust 2, 2013. The U.S. trailer was re­leased on May 7, 2013. The MPAA gave this film a PG rat­ing for "some mild rude content".

Receptionedit | edit source
Though the orig­i­nal Span­ish ver­sion of the film was re­ceived fa­vor­ably in Mex­ico and Latin Amer­ica, the Eng­lish dub of the film was uni­ver­sally panned in both the UK and the US.

Peter Brad­shaw of The Guardian gave the Eng­lish film 1 out of 5 stars, say­ing "It's the bot­tom of the heap, and it frankly looks cheap, the dis­as­ter of the year is – Top Cat". Derek Adams of Time Out Lon­don also gave the Eng­lish film 1 out of five stars, writ­ing, "a pity, then, that the key el­e­ments – sto­ry­line, di­a­logue, com­edy value – are so woe­fully in­ef­fec­tual. An air of bore­dom per­me­ated the screen­ing I at­tended and laughs were uni­ver­sally non-ex­is­tent." Colin Kennedy of Metro crit­i­cized the Eng­lish film, call­ing it "a dog's din­ner of a film which will bore new view­ers and dis­ap­point old ones" and "post-Pixar kids will be bored rigid." Michelle Moore of Close-Up Film gave the Eng­lish film a neg­a­tive re­view for its an­i­ma­tion, say­ing "When it comes to com­bin­ing the two, scenes and char­ac­ters, things at times get very dis­or­dered and ap­pear out of place." Rob of The Shiznit gave this 1 out of 5 stars and wrote, "It looks like Top Cat, sounds like Top Cat, but it doesn’t feel like Top Cat. It's as if a Mex­i­can film com­pany (Ánima Es­tu­dios) has taken an iconic Amer­i­can car­toon and slapped to­gether a bud­get ver­sion... oh, wait, that's ex­actly what's hap­pened."

Bethany Rut­ter of Lit­tle White Lies crit­i­cized the Eng­lish film say­ing that "it's hero­ically un­funny, the lame script is one of many stick­ing points. Awk­ward, clunky and pre­dictable, it pro­pels the film for­ward at a pace that man­ages to be both deathly slow and an­noy­ingly jumpy." Mike Sheri­dan of Entertainment.​ie crit­i­cized the Eng­lish film and wrote, "In a world where stu­dios are putting so much care into the de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ters in fam­ily aimed flicks, Top Cat just doesn’t cut it." Ge­of­frey Mac­nab of The In­de­pen­dent gave the Eng­lish film 2 out of 5 stars and said that "nei­ther the voice work (much of it done by Jason Har­ris) nor the an­i­ma­tion is dis­tinc­tive. Of­fi­cer Dib­ble has only a mar­ginal role. The use of 3D seems en­tirely to­kenis­tic (an ex­cuse to hike up ticket prices rather than an artis­tic de­ci­sion.)" On the pos­i­tive side, Matthew Turner of ViewLon­don en­joyed the Eng­lish film, say­ing that " This movie pro­vides a hand­ful of de­cent laughs, though some of the jokes are a bit dodgy, the 3D ef­fects are en­tirely su­per­flu­ous and younger chil­dren might be a lit­tle bored." Eddie Har­ri­son of The List also gave the Eng­lish film a pos­i­tive re­ac­tion, say­ing that "adults look­ing for un­de­mand­ing fare for their kids may find Top Cat's brand of sass, ir­rev­er­ence and cheeky charm offer a per­sua­sive al­ter­na­tive to today's crasser chil­dren's entertainments."

Triviaedit | edit source

 * Hoagy's Alley is spelled "Hoagie's."
 * During their meeting, Choo-Choo is watching the King for a Day program on his phone.
 * Benny rings a bell to call the horse from "The $1,000,000 Derby".
 * In the US dub of the movie, all of Strickland's lines were redubbed by Rob Schneider. Only one line was left untouched ("I like technology better than this mole I have on my butt that's shaped like a cow.")
 * In chronological order of the films and the story, this movie marks the end of the series.