PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie (2026)

By: Mike Ward on Thursday, August 13

PG Running Time: 88 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • The youngest among us will have a ball with this.

  • I will say, Marshall, the dalmatian, is a great choice to lead this third movie and the film scores points for handling disability representation with kindness and care.

  • Exhausting for a lot of the grown-ups, the movie is pitched to the preschool crowd - fast, colorful, pretty loud, and it has fun, cartoon dinosaurs!

NO

  • This Ryder kid raises deeply troubling questions about child labor, unsupervised minors, and the accumulation of vast unexplained wealth.

  • While colorful, the visuals are straightforward, center-cut, and never challenge the viewer in any discernible way.

  • Written for preschoolers. They will love it, and you might even enjoy this. But, as you’ll see below, I am not sure five-year-olds are paying all that much attention.


OUR REVIEW

If I was five years old, PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie might be the greatest thing I have ever seen. 

Then again, maybe not. But what I do know is that the five-year-old blonde boy who grabbed the railing and started dancing in the theater to scenes with or without music, repeatedly, seemed to be living the most meaningful moments of his life up to this point.

I am a lot older than five. And PAW Patrol is not made for me. And I was not at all interested in dancing on a railing while the Backstreet Boys sang this movie’s theme, co-written by Ed Sheeran, no less.

Suffice to say, I don’t want my PAW Patrol movie experience that way.

What I did observe, beyond “dancing boy,” is a frenzied, fast-paced story of a dog named Marshall (Carter Young), a dalmatian firefighter, needing to overcome his own clumsiness and hesitations and lead his fellow canine crusaders against the evil Mayor Humdinger’s efforts to mine an uncharted island for all of its diamonds. 

It is that island where most of the film takes place. Introduced in a PAW Patrol meets Jurassic Park-style homage, our first responder puppies discover the island after saving a family of influencers who seem to not care one bit that their yacht has burst into flames, leaving them in need of rescue at sea. Shout out to Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton, who provide voiceover cameos in that opening scene.

The assortment of doggies is led by the franchise’s most fascinating curiosity for me - Ryder (Henry Bolan), a 10-year-old human boy who is the apparent leader of the PAW Patrol. Now before the completists come after me telling me this and that about this kid, I can only comment on what I have seen in three PAW Patrol movies thus far.

Ryder is good for two things: money and an apparently incredible 3D printer. He can make tools and ships and armor and pretty much anything immediately. His resources are infinite. His intellect is not.

I have questions:. Where are Ryder’s parents? Where does his seemingly endless wealth come from? How can someone with the brilliant ability to engineer pretty much anything on a moment’s notice also spout off empty-headed things like, “We’ve got to rescue those people!” and “PAW Patrol, I think they are in trouble!”? And why does he look like Jimmy Neutron’s younger brother?

Nevermind. Five-year-olds don’t care about these things. Not when Mayor Humdinger (Ron Pardo) and his Kitten Catastrophe Crew are trying to steal jewels, destroy Dino Island, and take out the PAW Patrol at the same time!

Writer/director Cal Brunker completes his PAW Patrol trilogy here and center-cuts pretty much everything, keeping the action planted squarely in the middle of the screen. You need not worry about anything happening on the left or right side of the screen. Lock in, stay middle-focused, and everything you need to see will simply appear right in front of you. 

I will give props though for the theatrical introduction of Rex (Hayden Chamberlen), a Bernese Mountain Dog, who uses a wheelchair and has made much of Dino Island accessible. Rex’s character is handled with grace and kindness and, thankfully in the world of PAW Patrol, inclusion matters, even if your target audience is kindergarten and younger.

All of this is harmless, and I repeat what I said above: this movie is not made for me and I know this. The Dino Movie moves quickly, keeps any potential peril manageable for young viewers and never threatens to become particularly scary.  

Now, my 20-year-old son, among the most forgiving of people in this world, sat through this and has likely reached his end with all of this.

Not because of Marshall. Not because of the other dogs, and not because of the Backstreet Boys. 

We just don’t understand Ryder. At all. 

Maybe, in some PAW Patrol multiverse, these kindhearted dogs finally realize that they don’t need a 10-year-old human controlling everything they do. They rise up, stage an insurrection, overthrow Ryder, and lead their own PAW Patrol.

Now that’s the PAW Patrol movie I can’t wait to see.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Carter Young, Mckenna Grace, Ron Pardo, Henry Bolan, Terry Crews, Meredith MacNeill, Hayden Chamberlen, Rain Janjua, Lucien Duncan-Reid, William Desrosiers, Nylan Parthipan, Jennifer Hudson, Fortune Feimster, Bill Nye, Jameela Jamil, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton

Director: Cal Brunker
Written by: Bob Barlen, Cal Brunker
Based on the television series “PAW Patrol” created by Keith Chapman
Release Date: August 14, 2026
Paramount Pictures