A DOG’S WAY HOME:
A CUTE BUT MOSTLY GENERIC ANIMAL PICTURE!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4
COLUMBIA PICTURES
When you hear Bryce Dallas Howard (Spider-Man 3, The Help, Jurassic World 1 and 2) as a dog saying, “Cheese is my life” you immediately know what you’re getting into with A Dog’s Way Home. The film is based on a novel by W. Bruce Cameron who also wrote A Dog’s Purpose, which was adapted into a feature film a couple years ago…but that’s another story.
I have not read the books or seen A Dog’s Purpose, so I’m assuming this is some kind of spiritual successor to that film, similar to Jumanji and Zathura. If that’s the case then the filmmakers, author, and studios are on a roll with trying to make this a franchise because I got the trailer for the actual Dog’s Purpose sequel, A Dog’s Journey right before this movie.
There wasn’t much enthusiasm out of me regarding this film when I saw the trailer, I thought to myself this will just be a schmaltzy Hallmark movie with a budget, isn’t it? The trailer was so repetitive that at one point I refused to see the movie, I could be watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse a fourth time.
It just looked like every other animal drama movie that came out back in the 90s and early 2000s. The kind Homeward Bound, Shiloh, and My Dog Skip made popular at the time, except to those movies’ credit they didn’t need to pay a big-name celebrity to voice the dogs.
Then the reviews came out and the film managed to get in the “Fresh” zone on Rotten Tomatoes (a 60%, but still), so I decided to give A Dog’s Way Home a chance and caught a showing of it. After the…3 months of being resistant towards this movie, I can gladly sway that A Dog’s Way Home is perfectly…watchable.
It’s not awful or even bad but it doesn’t really do anything new with the formula and comes off as another animal adventure/drama. You know how it works, the friendship between a boy and his dog, the two of them get into goofy shenanigans, and they’re suddenly separated from each other and the dog has to find its way back home; been there, done that.
Similar to Marley & Me, the film squeezes in some dark and mature themes into this mostly family-friendly dog flick that I admire quite a bit. It’s not just playing with cute little doggies for an hour and a half, there is still a story and drama going on.
The film follows a dog named Bella (voiced by Howard) who was found at a construction site by a young man named Lucas (Newcomer, Jonah Hauer-King) and took her into his home. Bella and Lucas become best friends and do all sorts of activities together like playing ball, chasing squirrels, and of course eating tiny pieces of cheese.
But one day, she gets separated by her owner and begins a 400-mile journey to get back home. Along the way, she encounters a baby cougar which she mistakes for a big kitten and raises it like a child, a pack of coyotes out to hunt her, and she even rescues a skier from nearly getting killed by an avalanche, on her adventure to re-unite with Lucas.
The film also stars Ashley Judd (De-Lovely, Dolphin Tale 1 and 2, The Divergent Series) as Terri, Edward James Olmos (Blade Runner 1 and 2, Stand & Deliver, Battlestar: Galactica) as Axel, Alexandra Shipp (Straight Outta Compton, X-Men: Apocalypse, Love, Simon) as Olivia, Wes Studi (Dances with Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans, Avatar) as Captain Mica, Barry Watson (7th Heaven, What About Brian, Samantha Who?) as Gavin, and Tammy Gillis (Shooter, Battlestar: Galactica, Once Upon a Time) as Officer Leon.
Overall, A Dog’s Way Home is a serviceable animal movie that manages to blend sweet and heartfelt with depressing and intense. But compared to other films that have done the formula much better likeHomeward Bound or My Dog Skip, it doesn’t offer much outside of what we’ve seen a million times before.
The dog makes an unlikely friendship with another animal, it comes across dangerous things during its adventure, and take a wild guess what happens when the dog runs onto a freeway, no really, guess what happens. It’s predictable Hallmark movie fluff, but its heart and soul are in the right place and it’s hard to be angry at something that means well.
It’s an average but uneventful film, if you’re a dog lover or you got kids who want to see it, you’ll get your money’s worth. But if you’re looking for something game-changing that will crank up the emotion, I’d suggest leaving this “Dog” outside…along with that crappy looking Overcomer movie that comes out in August.
From the blog www.moviewatchinpsychopath.blogspot.com
Σχόλια