Review of Isle of Dogs (2018) by Emmett K — 14 Apr 2018

I had mixed feelings walking into "Isle of Dogs". On the plus side, I love stop-motion animation and dogs. On the minus side, I've hated just about every Wes Anderson movie I've ever seen. Reading reviews of his films introduced me to the word "twee"; In fact, I don't think I've ever heard it in any other context. I prepared myself for another night of listening to small groups of Andersonphiles laughing hysterically at intentionally "random" stuff in the background of scenes. I chose my show time to avoid crowds, sat way up front to provide a buffer, and steeled myself for the impending onslaught of hipster whimsy.

I'll cut to the chase. I liked the movie. I loved some scenes and endured others, but overall it was a pleasant surprise, far exceeding my admittedly low expectations.

As one might expect, there are a lot of dogs. We're told the dogs are barking like normal dogs but that their barks are conveniently translated into English. They aren't wise-cracking dogs like those in kids' movies and they aren't dogs-in-name-only like Brian on "Family Guy", but rather they're dogs who act like dogs but have human-like personalities.

The plot involves dogs being banished to a place called "Trash Island", purportedly because a dog flu is spreading through a large Japanese city, but also because the evil mayor's family has been nursing a dog-hating grudge for centuries. The first dog to be sent away is Spots, the guard dog of Atari, a 12-year-old orphan who's the mayor's ward. It seems strange that the mayor would give Atari a dog in the first place if he so hates dogs, but most of the details of this film are best not thought about.

Anyway, six months after Spots gets sent away, Atari manages to steal a small plane and fly it to the island, where he crash lands. There he meets a pack of five dogs (voiced by famous human actors who I don't feel like listing), and upon showing them a picture of Spots, they agree to help search for him.

I forgot to mention that the movie is set twenty years in the future, which mostly manifests itself in the form of enhanced weaponry and vicious robot dogs that are sent to retrieve Atari. The fight scenes are boring and stupid, except for the big gray ball of cotton fluff with dog appendages jutting out at various angles which is used to depict the melees, and that is only amusing the first time.

While the dog pack and Atari search for Spots, there's also stuff going on on the mainland. A scientist and his assistant search for a cure for dog flu while a young foreign exchange student with a blonde afro heads up a pro-dog movement.

Pretty much everything on the mainland feels unnecessarily complicated and confusing and not even worth trying to make sense of, though it's sometimes visually interesting. By contrast, the stuff involving Atari and the dogs is funny and charming and occasionally even touching. If only Anderson could just keep things simple and stop trying so hard to impress.

For me, the good far outweighed the barely tolerable with my love of dogs tipping the scales in the movie's favor. Two opposable thumbs up.