Our verdict: two stars

This year's surprise movie certainly lived up to its billing in the number of gasps it induced. Just a pity they were not always for the right reasons.

For whether one enjoyed this comedy horror from Marjane Satrapi rather depended on how much one reckons mental illness and serial killing can be played for laughs.

The cast, lead by Ryan Reynolds as Gerry and including Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick, clearly thought so, as did a fair sized section of the audience.

That was perhaps due less to the comedy chops of all concerned than the sight and sound of a cat and dog talking.

Gerry hears the voices of the title you see, in his case the voices of a dopey good natured dog and a hissy Scottish cat. As Johnny Morris always knew, talking animals are funny, right?

For the rest of the serial killer plot to work, Satrapi and her writer would have had to have been comedy geniuses. Those, alas, are about as rare as talking cats.