A family-friendly movie about dogs and the happiness they provide to us humans is now masked in controversy. An awful video of how production sacrificed the safety of a German Shepherd to get a single scene will get all animal lovers calling for their jobs. Their carelessness will undoubtedly earn A Dog’s Purpose a crippling backlash, and rightfully so. Yet, I am here to judge what happened on screen, not off of it. That’s what I do.
Directed by Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat, Dear John), A Dog’s Purpose is simply about one thing: devotion. Well, not quite. It’s about having a dog that never dies. A Pet Cemetery for kids, if you will. Josh Gad voices different breeds of furriness, going through different paws of life, trying to understand his existence. Each time he is reborn, the common theme are his owners lacking love in their lives. If only they had a four-legged friend to play cupid.
In case you can’t tell, this story is covered in sap, bringing the same soul in to different pups to make sad, lonely people feel some kind of joy.
Of all the dogs’ lives, Bailey is the one that lingers the most. He finds love in a young boy named Ethan (Bryce Gheisar), full of innocence and learning about responsibility. That’s been the rule of getting a pet forever. You have to promise you’ll take care of it. And Ethan (KJ Apa) does all through his teenage years, Bailey right by his side during his throes of his alcoholic dad and his college football dreams coming to a crashing halt. As Bailey becomes Buddy, Tino, and Ellie, he never loses the scent of Ethan (Dennis Quaid) or his long lost love Hannah (Britt Robertson/Peggy Lipton).
Whenever a dog movie comes out, we get all wide-eyed and mushy. You know what I mean. It’s a normal reaction, really. We just can’t help ourselves.
Hallstrom knows a thing or two about manipulating your feelings all in the name of loving man’s best friend. He has dabbled in this before with Hachi: A Dog’s Tale starring Richard Gere. A Dog’s Purpose has a familiar bark with no bite. Every time the immortal pooch opens his eyes, the plot gets lazier, more absurd and overly sentimental.
You soon feel like Old Yeller, ready for the bullet to the head.
The truth is, if you are a dog person, A Dog’s Purpose already has you eating out of its hand. Well, until that hand pushed a frightened dog into the water against his will.
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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