Directed by: Charles Martin Smith
Runtime: 96 minutes
When reviewing films, it is important to address them with the correct criteria. If Tarantino’s latest was trope-laden and contrived, I would be embarking on a five-hundred word rant about how far a great has fallen. If presented with an entertaining, but flawed, action movie, I would say it did the job that it set out to. This is what makes reviewing films like A Dog’s Way Home so difficult; it’s a film manufactured to bring a tear to your eye, while it doesn’t try to present anything new or different to chew on.
Based upon the book written by W. Bruce Cameron (the Nicholas Sparks of dog movies who, incidentally, also co-wrote the script), A Dog’s Way Home follows Bella, a loyal companion who walks over 500 miles across Colorado to return to her human. The plot ambles along, following Bella from place to place as she continues her journey. Even though the film only clocks in at 96 minutes, something about the structure of the story made it seem like I was in the cinema for two and a half hours. Whether it was the constant state of anxiety I found myself in throughout the runtime (things do get surprisingly dark in the last third), the fact that a story like this lends itself to many ‘mini-climaxes’ instead of one grander peak, or that the narrative just dragged, I haven’t been able to work out what exactly made the cinema I sat in a time-chamber.
The humans in the film were alright. You didn’t see them too much, and the performances weren’t Oscar-worthy, but I didn’t really cringe at them. I will give a shout-out to Shelby, the canine ‘actress’ who portrayed Bella, our main character. The dog was obviously trained incredibly well, and really sold a broken leg toward the climax. Most of the film is narrated by Bryce Dallas Howard serving as Bella’s interior monologue, and while I would have preferred for the dog to remain more realistically silent, it didn’t detract too much.
Did it tear me up? Well, yeah. A film like this is created to manipulate any empathetic human being to cry. If you love dogs, the lump in your throat is pretty much guaranteed, even if the film doesn’t seem to really earn it. The one subplot that really did leave me cold involved a cougar kitten, so awfully CGI-ed that it looked like the dog was interacting with thin air. The fact we had a very real dog next to a cartoonish CGI cougar, and were supposed to believe in an emotional relationship between the two, really took away from the semblance of quality the film was clinging onto.
As dog movies go, this is fine. It’s heart-warming enough, and the dog is cute. It ticks off the criteria it holds itself to, and that’s okay. Basically, if you like dog movies—you could do worse.
spot on review.