A Dog's Journey
a dull family adventure film - 3/10
by The Movie Inspector
A dull family adventure film, A Dog’s Journey creates quite a tedious narrative that never seems to have a clear and solid focus. It’s honestly just another film that wishes to highlight the fidelity of man’s best friend yet fails due to some very poor execution.
One thing that’s clear from the very beginning is that the movie wants to get you emotionally attached to it’s characters and their loyal furry friends, but that doesn’t really work as it’s forced in to ever corner. Besides that, I don’t think it’s possible to invest in characters when they literally have no aim or development. Sympathizing with a dog’s narration is nowhere near sufficient to justify’s the story’s purpose or whole existence. As far as the story goes, it works with a very simple idea that doesn’t really allow a smooth flow but a rather rocky one that builds on repetitiveness. ‘A Dog’s Journey’ follows a dog who seeks to find a way to a little girl and protect her as she grows up.
The movie kicks off with a lackluster first act, that doesn’t do too well at providing clarity or a story focus. As the film progresses, one begins to realize just how horribly paced and exhaustingly lengthy it is. It felt as if it was trying to fill in the missing gaps by inserting repetitive scenes and rehashing lots of material from its predecessor, ‘A Dog’s Purpose’. Many of the characters lacked depth and were thrown in just to help aid the poorly written script and that becomes really evident and makes it really difficult to take the film seriously. To add to all of this, most of the cast gave out robotic performances that made many scenes quite laughable.
Predictability is also an issue, I mean seriously it works with something so simple that it’s nearly impossible not to guess what comes next. Being a kid targeted movie doesn’t justify this level of predictability. After an extended runtime, several dry character exchanges and emotionless moments, we finally get a warm scene but unfortunately that’s the very last scene. Had that atmosphere been present across the whole narrative, it would’ve been more meaningful and enjoyable. I do think that kids will genuinely enjoy this movie but I can’t guarantee the same thing for adults.
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