Two stars. PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.21.20
This certainly isn’t Jack London’s Call of the Wild.
To a certain degree, that’s good; among other things, the novel’s handling of Native Americans is a lamentable reflection of its 1903 origins.
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| As they spend more time in the wilderness of the Canadian Yukon, John Thornton (Harrison Ford) senses that his canine friend Buck is responding to something instinctively more powerful than his attachment to mankind. |
But prudent adjustment on behalf of cultural sensitivity does not justify the insufferable Disney-fication of this otherwise classic saga. Although Harrison Ford does his best — as both narrator and human star — the story’s nobility has been lost in scripter Michael Green’s clumsy, tone-deaf and wildly uneven adaptation.
On top of which, the decision to rely on CGI fabrications — as opposed to actual dogs — is a serious miscalculation. That may fly with the wild animals in The Lion King and The Jungle Book; most of us aren’t intimately familiar with how lions, tigers, elephants and the like actually move. But we all know how dogs think, behave, walk, run and jump … and this film’s faux canines frequently look wrong, wrong, wrong.
No surprise, given that visual effects supervisors Ryan Stafford and Erik Nash “built” their canine star — Buck — from the athletic movements of a former Cirque du Soleil performer pretending to be a dog.
Are we to imagine that Hollywood lacks real dogs that could have served as models for London’s powerful, 140-pound St. Bernard-Scotch Collie mix?
Poppycock.
OK, fine; the SFX grants Buck more insight, sensitivity and expressive personality than we’d likely get from an actual dog actor (although seasoned canine trainers likely would argue that point). But this anthropomorphization constantly feels false and phony; it was fine for the wholly animated pooches in Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians, but here it’s merely distracting.
Green’s script follows most of the significant plot beats in London’s novel, so we initially meet Buck as the pampered, wholly out of control pet in the genteel, staff-laden household of wealthy Judge Miller (Bradley Whitford). This prolog marks an inauspicious beginning by director Chris Sanders, who unwisely channels the dreadful 1960s Disney comedies that involved animals — often dogs — running amok and destroying furniture, spilling the contents of every container in sight, and generally making as huge a mess as possible … supposedly because this was the height of hilarity.
It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.
Thankfully, this segment is brief. Before Buck can look properly abashed for destroying a Sunday afternoon banquet, he’s kidnapped, crated and whisked northward, where would-be gold prospectors pay cash for powerful sled dogs, no questions asked. Buck winds up in the Canadian Yukon township of Dawson City, where he (rather magically) evades both his initial captors and first new owner — one senses additional scenes sloppily left on the cutting-room floor — and ultimately winds up in the care of Perrault (Omar Sy) and Francoise (Cara Gee), partners in a Canadian dogsled mail delivery service.
Which is where — amid much slipping and sliding, all exaggerated for comic effect — Buck learns to become his “real self.”
This is the film’s best segment, mostly due to Sy’s operatic blend of exasperation, gesticulations and French-inflected imprecations. Gee’s dry asides are equally amusing; she and Sy — the latter well remembered from 2011’s The Intouchables — are a good Mutt ’n’ Jeff fit.
This is also the one time Sanders generates some actual excitement, as Buck adapts to sled-dogging and helps Perrault realize his dream of making a record run from Dawson City to Skagway.
That said…
The other dogs in Perrault and Francoise’s team are the canine equivalent of the Seven Dwarfs: wheezing, under-muscled misfits who look like they couldn’t move a chew-toy across the room, let alone pull a sled. It’s the exasperating Disney touch again: woebegone mutts “created” solely for distinct visual personalities, rather than any sense of job credibility.
The one exception is Spitz, the nasty white husky who leads the team (and the primary antagonist in London’s novel). He looks and behaves like a true alpha sled dog: one not willing to tolerate disrespect from an outsider.
Alas — following London’s template — circumstances soon place Buck in the hands of new owners: dandified big-city transplants Hal (Dan Stevens), his spoiled and selfish sister Mercedes (Karen Gillan) and her feckless husband Charles (Colin Woodell). They’ve come to the Yukon with gold stars in their eyes, and not the slightest notion of how to survive in this inhospitable territory … except that it must involve buying dogs and whipping them into submission.
Stevens quickly establishes Hal as the story’s human villain, and goodness, but he oversells the part, with mad eyes and snarling, rabid dog-style foaming at the mouth. He’s a cartoon … and yet, as we move into the third act, we’re expected to regard him as a serious threat.
Actually, that’s a lurch into the third act. If you thought Whitford’s early appearance as Judge Miller was fleeting, you won’t believe the brevity accorded Mercedes and Charles. It’s another magic trick: One moment they’re here, and then poof! … they’re gone. Once again, some serious plot elements were snipped away (which, just in passing, is shameful treatment for a performer of Gillan’s stature).
Ford’s gruff, venerable John Thornton dominates the third act: a man carrying an unbearable load of emotional pain, who nonetheless senses that Buck is being pulled to his canine destiny — the “call of the wild” — in part via frequent sightings of a black, spectral “ghost wolf.”
Ford has lost none of his charm, even when playing a character beaten down by despair; his quieter moments with Buck — who is keenly sensitive to human emotion — generate a bit of emotional gravitas that carries the story to its conclusion (which, after a fashion, honors London’s text).
Getting there, though, involves inept narrative omissions and wildly random shifts of tone. It’s obvious that Ford’s voice-over narration was a last-minute act of desperation, intended to paper over clumsy scene shifts and plot holes. (Because, when you think about it, how could Ford’s Thornton relate Buck’s early adventures, before they even meet?)
Jack London purists will hate this film, and it’s also unlikely to find favor with family-oriented patrons. CGI has become too much of a reflexive crutch for lazy filmmakers, and we all suffer the results.
Although, frankly, not even Rin Tin Tin could have saved this film.
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