Miss Moxy (Dubbed) (U)

Moxy is the house cat of nine-year-old Josy and her parents, Rudy and Hanna. The family prepares to go on holiday to a farmhouse near Lyon while Moxy will be cat-sat by Grandma. Josy smuggles her favourite furball into a bag and the parents reluctantly agree to bring along Moxy. Farmhouse owner Rita is preparing to appear on Animals Got Talent and catnaps Moxy, who can play the piano. Josy is heartbroken and returns home to the city without her four-legged soulmate.

LondonNet Film Review

Miss Moxy (U) Film Review from LondonNet

The animal magic is rudimentary but sweetly sincere in a Dutch and Belgian co-produced computer animation directed by Vincent Bal and Wip Vernooij based on the true story of a tabby cat named Boo, who found her way back home after 13 years. Breezily dubbed into English for family audiences in the UK and Ireland, Miss Moxy treads lightly on its paws when it comes to on-screen violence and threat, punctuating an episodic journey from countryside to city with upbeat original songs…

Moxy (voiced by Tess Bryant) is the house cat of nine-year-old Josy (Matilda Boselli) and her parents, Rudy (Vincent Broes) and Hanna (Debby Phillips). The pampered puss slinks over city rooftops with her sisters in cattitude led by well-to-do Pink (Arianna D’Amato), loudly extolling their self-granted status as “the VIPs of the litter box” to other pets in the neighbourhood. Rudy and Hanna tell Josy they are going on holiday to a farmhouse near Lyon and Moxy will be cat-sat by Grandma (Judith Okon) in their absence. The girl smuggles her favourite furball into a bag and the parents reluctantly agree to bring along Moxy.

Farmhouse owner Rita (Ella Leyers) is preparing to appear on Animals Got Talent with her tightrope-walking dog Brute (Pieter Embrechts). When she discovers Moxy can play the piano, she catnaps the animal and pretends Moxy ran away. Josy is heartbroken and returns home to the city without her four-legged soulmate. Meanwhile, Moxy blags her way out of confinement by filling Brute’s head with dreams of Doggo Paradise and the resourceful feline embarks on an epic trek back to the city using a swallow named Ayo (Richard Wells) as a wise-cracking Satnav perched on her back.

Miss Moxy is a rites-of-passage story that sinks its claws politely into predictable narrative beats and hisses loudly the importance of friendship and self-belief to overcome obstacles that life invariably throws in our paths. Visuals falls short of The Secret Life Of Pets and other pedigree breeds on the animation block. Featured cats are short-haired or have coats that conveniently don’t ruffle in the gentlest breeze, negating any need for the army of animators to fixate on the realistic movement of creatures’ fur in different weather conditions and scenarios.

Vocal performances are similarly solid but unremarkable although Wells comes closest to standing out from the flock with his woe-is-me feathered sage, who has a few choice sayings under his wing (“Shame is the adviser of wounded pride”) that will soar over the heads of the target audience. Musical numbers are gentle bops and a sub-90-minute running time will be cat nip to parents’ ears.

– Sarah Lee