![]() The performances are the best part of the film, and I’m mostly talking about the animal talent. Every subsequent attempt just brings back diminishing returns and makes it more and more obvious just how desperately Hallström wants our tears, and he will kill as many puppies as he has to just to satiate his thirst. Hallström’s manipulation is pardonable at the beginning because there is a good amount of groundwork leading up to it. Unfortunately, the more lives we visit, the more hackneyed and rush the approach feels, cheapening any goodwill the viewer may have developed up to that point. The initial story (which is later revisited) takes it’s time developing the relationship between boy and pup, which then makes the emotional climax at the end of that story the most powerful part of the film. Hallström approaches this film with the same formulaic technique that you would find in your run-of-the-mill Hallmark film, and surprisingly it works, if only the first time. The entire film is centered around his lives, but only in so much as it builds up to their inevitable end. It won’t come as a surprise to you, but our cinema canine has to die multiple times in order to be reincarnated. Where director Lasse Hallström fails the film is in the pacing and forcing of emotions. The film does a great job highlighting diversity in the representation of his owners and pays great attention to detail in the recreation of the time period’s aesthetic. While Bailey is facing this philosophical crisis, we see him as a different dog in multiple lives, none all of which are great and a few result in an early death. Bailey’s existentialist journey is a contagious one that will most likely have you leaving the theater re-evaluating whether our imposed slavery on these animals is really what is best for them. At the same time, almost everything bad that has ever happened to him was because of humans. It takes innumerable lifetimes and dog years for the dog to come to the conclusion that maybe his purpose is dependant on humans. The problem with a dog continuously facing an existential crisis is that it presents all the evidence suggesting that maybe we are the problem. ![]() Bruce Cameron, all in the doghouse for this melodramatic fiasco. In this case, that would put screenplay writers Catherine Michon, Audrey Wells, Maya Forbes, Wally Wolodarsky, and screenplay writer and novelist W. A cat person would offer the explanation that dogs are inherently dumb, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and blame lazy script writing. The weirder part is that the dog remembers all of its memories and experiences from its past lives, but for some reason does not utilize them. In the end, A Dog’s Purpose is a toothless statement on animal companionship proving that this film’s bark is much more interesting than its bite.Ī Dog’s Purpose spends the film in the simple mindset of a dog who continues to be reincarnated every time it dies. This imitation leaves the film feeling watered-down and without any edge. Where both of these films create genuine emotion that works in harmony every other aspect of the film, A Dog’s Purpose attempts to force the sentiment, turning this dog film into a pale copycat. Both films show two extremes of storytelling where the execution transcends the amount of time it takes to deliver that emotional gut-punch. ![]() I cried at the beginning of UP and at the end of Marley & Me.
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