A DOG’S WAY HOME:
A CUTE BUT MOSTLY
GENERIC ANIMAL PICTURE!
By Nico
Beland
Movie
Review: ** ½ out of 4
COLUMBIA
PICTURES
Bella
the dog in A Dog’s Way Home
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 say 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 like Homeward 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.
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