A Dog's Purpose - movie review

A Dog's Purpose

Plot: A dog looks to discover his purpose in life over the course of several lifetimes and owners.
Cast: Josh Gad, Dennis Quaid, Peggy Lipton
Director: Lasse Hallström
Certificate: PG (mild threat, emotional scenes)
Runtime: 1hr 40 mins
Release Date: Friday 5th May 2017

To my American readers, you're probably slightly confused as to why I'm reviewing a film that came out for you back in January. Simple answer - here in Britain, we're slow. Incredibly slow. A Dog's Purpose follows the life of Josh Gad's voice as we watch a dog live and then die and then live again and then die again, continuously. I'd say this would be a great film to take the kids too but then again this film has quite a high death count. Nevertheless, on with the story of "The Buddha Dog".

It's probably a fair comment to say that Josh Gad has a fairly recognisable voice ever since he helped bring Olaf, the indestructible zombie snowman from Frozen, to life. From that point on, he's been like chlamydia in a whore house. He's just everywhere. Gad did an incredible job as LeFou in Disney's reimagining of Beauty & The Beast but apart from anything seemingly tied to Disney, I haven't been fully bowled over by him. He seems tied to the excitable sidekick stereotype. Unfortunately for Gad in A Dog's Purpose, his voice is so recognisable as him that I never heard the inner thoughts of whichever dog the film was focusing on. All I heard was Gad doing his best Disney Nature documentary from a first person perspective. However, I don't believe this to be Gad's fault. With the idea of the reincarnation of the dogs, none of them, except the first, are given any varied personality. Bailey (our intro dog) is the one we spend most time with and it was his story that I found myself mildly investing in.  Sure, the trope of boy meets dog and we watch them grow up together is cheesy and easy to tug on the heartstrings but part of me fell for it. Lasse Hallström doesn't do anything special with his direction but what he lacks in originality he makes up for in sweetness through the first act. Personally, the Buddha dog scenario should have been scrapped entirely and the film should have solely focused on Bailey's bond with Ethan and the family. Sadly, every time the dog was reincarnated through a magical and glittery vortex and Josh Gad narrates the fact that it's happening again (if it wasn't obvious enough), the film gradually lost me. It was only as we are reintroduced to older Ethan (Dennis Quaid, who gets a whopping fifteen to twenty minutes of screentime) that A Dog's Purpose finds its stride again and reverts back to its basic and easily time-passable ways. I won't lie. At the end of the film and when certain revelations come to light, it got me. Screw it. I'm a sucker for animals and if you do anything emotional towards them, you're likely to crack me. Truth be told, Quaid's performance isn't half bad. I presumed he'd just phone it in but he actually seems to care and gives a well natured and heartfelt performance.

FACT: Prior to theatrical release, controversy arose when behind-the-scenes footage surfaced and appeared to show a distressed dog being forcibly submerged into turbulent pool water during filming. As a result of the leaked footage, the filmmakers chose to cancel the U.S. premiere. However, it was announced on February 4, 2017 by the American Humane Association that the footage was indeed fake.

Whenever the film was focused on Ethan, Bailey or Bailey #2, I enjoyed it. It's whenever we saw Gad voicing other dogs (but yet the same dogs?? This is confusing me) that I began to check out. One little arc isn't too bad when Gad becomes a Corgi living through a college girl's life but even that goes on for an obscene amount of time to the point where, and please don't consider me a monster, I was just waiting for the dog to die so we could move onto the next sequence. And there lies what I believe to be A Dog's Purpose's fundamental issue; SO FREAKING PREDICTABLE!! For a premise about a canine with the powers of a divine being, this script is unbelievably cookie cutter. You only need to see the opening five minutes of this film and you can effortlessly write out a detailed bullet point list of how this film will conclude and you'd pass with flying colours. It's no surprise that the crux of the film is the relationship between Ethan and this Buddha dog so, and I'm sorry to sound like a monster again, anytime the dog is not with Ethan, you're patiently waiting for it to die so we get that bit closer to the reunion. If that's the films intention, it's actually pretty sick and someone clearly needs counselling but I'm going to presume that it's not and we'll just boil it down to messy writing. In amongst all of these filler stories, we see an arc focusing on Gad's Buddha dog now serving the Police Force which is all well and good but...why? Why do we need to see this? Yes, it may have been in the book and in some sort of way it's showing the various uses of a dog (not just a pet) but that whole mini story feels out of place. Furthermore, it's incredibly depressing. Centered on a lonely policeman who has clearly been divorced or widowed and no longer has his children to contact, this dog had to watch his owner fall apart mentally. What the hell happened to cute dogs fetching deflated footballs? Speaking of deflated footballs, I'm presuming they contacted Tom Brady to provide those. There's even a small sequence where this poor couple own and mistreat the Buddha dog. Doesn't this sound like such a happy film? Truth be told, for the entire time, I was waiting for any incarnation of the Buddha dog to wander into a kennel and become a Spy Dog and fight talking cats. What can I say? My childhood was heavily reliant on watching Cats Vs. Dogs on repeat.

For a family orientated film, I think the concept of a Buddha dog will go over many children's heads and continuously seeing a cute dog pass away will likely scar them for life. For me, I found A Dog's Purpose to lack a real purpose. The deaths soon became numb, the second half felt utterly pointless and apart from Bailey, I never found any of the other dogs to emotionally invest me enough. That being said, I really did fall for the Bailey and Ethan story which is the saving grace. And that's saying something considering I'm a cat person.

My Verdict: 6/10

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