Review of Isle of Dogs (2018) by Jeff M — 05 Apr 2018

While it's a given that a Wes Anderson film will be whimsical, it is more surprising to find his second stop-motion animation to be so politically timely. Set in a futuristic Japan, the dog-hating Mayor of Megasaki City decrees that all dogs are to be exiled to Trash Island as a result of Dog Flu and it is up to the Mayor's ward, 12-year-old Atari, and a bunch of young activists to save the canine population from total annihilation even after a cure was found but suppressed.

A bold and perhaps idiosyncratic move is to have the humans speak in their native tongue (i.e. Japanese), and translated organically only when available, while the dogs' barking are dubbed into English.

Anderson regulars (Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton) as well as newbies (Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson) lend their voices to the fluffy band of four-legged reprobates but the true star here is of course, Anderson, who dreamt up such an incredibly imaginative original story and tells it in a mischievous and unmistakably Andersonian manner, with stunning visuals that are meticulously rendered in great details, where every frame is as gloriously sumptuous as it is dryly funny.

Some of the Japanese characterizations may border on stereotypes and the story unravels a little towards the end, leaning a bit too much into the fantastical and perhaps twee side, but it only diminishes marginally my enjoyment of this exquisite film in which people in power conspiring to commit election fraud via lies and propaganda is ultimately defeated by both science and a group of compassionate and energetic younger people galvanized to do what is necessary to overcome a tyrannical authority and reunite us with our best (canine) friends.