DC League of Super-Pets wonders what would happen if Superman's best friend was a dog called Krypto. The best thing about this film is Dwayne Johnson and his buddy Kevin Hart who are genuinely funny.
If you've been to a cinema full of under-10s, you'll know there's not a lot to be said in favour of the experience.
But one thing about that audience, they're not cynical. They've been looking forward to this all week, they're hopped up on chocolate, and they can't wait to see Super- Pets.
Actually, its full name is DC League of Super-Pets, which isn't encouraging. But the audience I saw it with knew what to expect.
When puppy Krypto hitches a ride with baby Kal-El as the planet Krypton explodes around them, one clear 8-year-old voice called out "That's Superman's dog!"
Indeed it is. And the opening scene where Superman's dog tries to get his owner out of bed for a walk was the highlight of the film for my neighbours.
The more the dog - voiced by Dwayne Johnson, the Rock - plays with dopey Superman, the better they liked it.
But sadly, that audience was lied to by its trailer. Super-Pets has been colonised by the DC League of Animators, who thought their mission was to spoof DC's comic-book superheroes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest.
These are the people who did the same job on the Lego movies, after all.
Through a mixture of misadventures, supervillain Lex Luthor takes Superman and Krypto out of the picture with green kryptonite and also chucks some hitherto never-heard-of-it orange kryptonite into a local pet shop.
So now Supe and his dog are essentially non-super, but the humble inhabitants of the pet shop - a dog, a squirrel, a pig and a tortoise - all get superpowers.
And if you've got Super-Pets, you have to have a Supervillain-Pet - a sinister guinea pig who used to work in Luthor's laboratory. You know, evil Lex Luthor, Superman's arch-enemy - do keep up…
Trouble is, my audience had rather lost interest in keeping up after rather more exposition about the DC Universe than anyone needs.
The endless chatter from the screen - The Rock's never had so much dialogue in a film, and it's matched by supervillain Lulu the Guinea Pig, voiced by the often irritating Kate McKinnon - started to be echoed by chatter in the audience.
It's a sign that a movie is failing to grab a very young audience when the prospect of another visit to the loo is more appealing than in-jokes about product placement and licensing.
Yes, that is another Batman, putting the number of Batmen currently in play in the DC Universe into double figures, I think. This time it's Keanu Reeves, proving that all actors sound the same when they do the Batman voice.
The best thing about DC League of Super-Pets is another team-up of The Rock and his buddy Kevin Hart who plays the street-smart ex-normal dog 'Ace'.
The pair are genuinely funny, and their stuff works across the board. Kids love them, parents like them, and it shows what the movie could have been if they'd cut back on the comic-book store chatter.
But that's often the problem with DC Comics films, and why they are usually outplayed by their Marvel - and Disney - rivals.
So often they're tone-deaf, with no idea who exactly they're aiming at. Kids or comic-book geeks, pick one. Or in my case, fewer than one.
But the good news about the younger set is they're amazingly forgiving as an audience. As they came out of the cinema, they'd already forgotten the endless dialogue and extended fight scenes. They'd just seen Superman's dog! Good enough.
