A Dog’s Purpose image via eOne.
When the cat-focused documentary Kedi started reaching festivals and cinemas last year, it turned its cameras on feisty felines without resorting to shameless sentiment-wringing. These mousers were overwhelmingly endearing, as anyone could tell just by looking at them, but their stories of survival on the streets of Istanbul were compelling for a plethora of reasons – sociological, historical, and cultural among them – beyond their “awww”-inducing appearance and accepted status as one of humanity’s primary pets. It may be fictional rather than factual; however consider A Dog’s Purpose the anti-Kedi. Squeezing every ounce of emotion out of man’s best friend by not only placing a procession of adorable pooches on screen, but connecting them via reincarnation and voicing their thoughts in a child-like manner, is the film’s primary aim.
Adapted by the book of the same name by its author W. Bruce Cameron (who also penned 8 Simple Rules… for Dating My Teenage Daughter) with fellow screenwriters Cathryn Michon (Muffin Top: A Love Story), Audrey Wells (The Game Plan), Maya Forbes (Infinitely Polar Bear), and Wally Wolodarsky, A Dog’s Purpose follows five of the central canine’s lives. After a short stint as a feral puppy who meets a bleak end at the pound, he becomes Bailey, the constant sidekick to a boy named Ethan (Bryce Gheisar, TV’s Walk the Prank) in the ‘60s. Bailey views the ups and downs of Ethan’s existence as the latter dotes on his mother (Juliet Rylance, American Gothic), struggles with his troubled father (Luke Kirby, Rectify), grows into a football-champ teen (K.J. Apa, Riverdale), and falls for the spirited Hannah (Britt Robertson, Girlboss). In his next guises, the dog works for police officer (John Ortiz, Going in Style) in the ‘70s, then watches a college student (Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Love) find love in the ’80s and start a family in the ‘90s, before going to an unloving home in the ’00s – all while knowing that he’s (and sometimes she) still Bailey, and still subsequently pining for Ethan.
It doesn’t take a perennially warm glow to demonstrate the sappy tone that A Dog’s Purpose wallows in, but director Lasse Hallström (The Hundred-Foot Journey) plasters one across his images anyway, exemplifying the movie’s determination to shout the obvious. That bounding balls of fur can elicit fond responses is an accepted fact; here, it’s the film’s purpose. Indeed, every stylistic decision – cinematographer Terry Stacey (Special Correspondents) favours a dog’s-eye view, and composer Rachel Portman (Their Finest) ratchets up the saccharine notes, for example – is calculated with the precise goal of conjuring a tearful reaction to cute critters. Savvy animal casting gifts the feature with photogenic four-pawed stars, yet the film itself doesn’t seem to trust that they’ll do the required job well enough without the intrusion of overt aesthetic embellishment.
Of course, given the material, the heavy-handed approach that Hallström takes is hardly surprising. The narrative doesn’t limit its blatant manipulation to canine lovers, as the Josh Gad (Beauty and the Beast)-voiced, Look Who’s Talking-esque dispatches of the chief hound’s simplistic existential-leaning thoughts stress, in case the plot developments themselves didn’t make that plain. One cranky cat pops up, but the story endeavours to encompass anyone who’s had a difficult childhood, chased a dream, loved and lost, hasn’t seen their life turn out the way they planned, or just wonders about their own reason for being. If that all sounds like the clichéd and cloying path that a Nicholas Sparks’ novel and its screen adaptations might take, that’s because A Dog’s Purpose appears to be striving to offer an animal-centric copy of the romance author’s work.
As well as delivering an enthusiastic golden retriever, a heroic German shepherd, a pizza-loving corgi, and more yearning to the connect with the human their reincarnated soul calls their own across a series of vignettes, that act of imitation comes with a final chapter that hammers home a love story between the movie’s best two-legged talents. Dennis Quaid (Fortitude) and Peggy Lipton (Twin Peaks) aren’t at their best in the segment that wraps up everything with a big smile, and still they’re the best thing about a feature that wrangles cheap sentiment – and purports to present meaning – out of not just adorable dogs, but their passing. In terms of exploiting emotions, watching a middle-aged couple find each other proves a welcome improvement to seeing a pooch live, love, and die over and over. A Dog’s Purpose’s mawkishness might only have a couple of shades, but for all of the heart-melting titular creatures barking and bouncing about, the earnestness of long-lost lovers inevitably grates less, and feels more authentic, than cooing and crying over dead and reborn puppies.
Rating: 1.5 stars out of 5
A Dog’s Purpose
Director: Lasse Hallström
USA, 2017, 100 mins
Release date: May 4
Distributor: eOne
Rated: PG
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