Genre:
Adventure, Drama, Family
Produced by:
Erwin Stoff
Directed by:
Chris Sanders
Written by:
Michael
Green
Production Company: 20th Century Studios
Starring: Harrison
Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, Colin Woodell, Cara
Gee, Terry Notary
Runtime: 100 minutes
SYNOPSIS:
Buck is a domesticated dog who lives a
happy, pampered life in his California home. All of that changes when he is suddenly
stolen away and taken further into the wilderness of Yukon during the Klondike Gold
Rush of the 1890’s. As he’s being passed over from one master to the next, he begins
to finally find some comfort when he paws his way into becoming a member of a
mail delivery dog sled team and eventually its leader, leading him towards
various adventures where he has to choose between civilization and the wild.
REVIEW:
As an author whose work has spanned
multiple genres, Jack London made a
name for himself by being the pioneer of dog stories. And his most popular dog
story might be considered by many as his magnum opus: The Call of the Wild (1903). Its influence in the pop culture landscape
endures, much like its survivalist lead canine character Buck and, even in
real-life, the equally survivalist London
himself. The novel is still widely read by everyone around the world. After
all, it’s kind of mandatory for high school students. Its central themes of
civilization v. wilderness and someone trying to find a place in the society
are timeless and universal, regardless of whether it’s the 19th
century or the 21st century, whether one’s a canine or a human being.
These themes define London’s entire bibliography. He’s so interested in this story that
he then made its spiritual successor White
Fang (1906), which looked at the same situation from a different perspective.
In many subsequent reprinting, it has often been published as the companion
piece to the Call of the Wild. But
it’s the Call of the Wild that people
keep coming back to, particularly Hollywood as it’s been adapted to the screen
numerous times with big names like Charlton
Heston and Rutger Hauer involved
in its long history.
In 2020, Harrison Ford joins the ranks of those acting greats with this
eight screen adaptation and fifth that’s theatrically released of the Call of the Wild, now directed by Chris Sanders, a first-time director in
the live-action world who previously made animated flicks such as Lilo & Stitch (2002), How to Train Your
Dragon (2010) and, most recently, the
Croods (2013). This version of the
Call of the Wild marks the first Fox release under for newly branded 20th
Century Studios, a name that was last used coincidentally in the 1935 version
of the Call of the Wild. Its journey
to the cinema is not easy, with problems ranging from the constantly changing
release dates to the Internet’s adverse reaction to the dog’s look in the
trailer.
2020’s the Call of the Wild is sometimes a mildly pleasant and passably amusing
throwback to a more innocent time in Hollywood, when an endless supply of those
old-fashioned, family-friendly, mainstream wintertime canine studio entertainments
like White Fang (1991), Iron Will (1993) and Eight Below (2006) used to tumble from
the Disney conveyor belt on the daily during the 90’s up until the late 2000’s and
they, like this one, are the cinematic equivalent of sitting by a warm roaring
fire, so relaxing and soothing. Working from a pretty straightforward script by
Michael Green, Sanders’ adaptation is a fairly light, Disneyfied, but narratively faithful
distillation of its source material, riding that fine line between hitting many
of the familiar beats to appease the book’s long-time fans and also offering a
somewhat nice, gentler introduction to London’s
otherwise complex, mature world for the younger kids.
The
Call of the Wild
comes as a rather welcome reprieve from the whole live-action talking and singing
animal movie fatigue. The creative choice to express the animals’ emotions
through body language not only hews closely to London’s original vision, but it also brings some much-needed air of
animalistic realness and childlike wonder to the proceedings that words can’t
even describe. Nearly every scene where the animals are all alone, detached
from their human counterparts, it plays out almost like a mini silent movie,
and Sanders does an effective job of
retaining the animal characters’ natural instincts in ways that somehow make
them all the more human.
Despite its mainly episodic construction,
there’s a clear, compelling connective tissue to keep everything together: Buck’s hero’s journey. Green crafts a purely character-driven dog story packed with a long series of survival
set-pieces, each one taking the viewers deeper into the perils and magic of the
Yukon wilderness as well as closer to fulfilling the canine’s arc of embracing
his inner primal nature. The turning point in Buck’s character is perhaps the
ultimate physical confrontation between him and his sled dog rival Spitz.
It’s easily the best action sequence in
the movie. Sanders is able to build a
good amount of tension leading up to the big showdown, in which case he lets
his animated filmmaking sensibilities run riot. Each frame and the way the
shadows and the lighting cast over the snowy plains provide the imagery with the
sort of mythical quality that’s prevalent in his How to Train Your Dragon movie.
Buck’s path of self-discovery mirrors that
of an old man and his eventual master John Thornton (Harrison Ford). Much of the movie’s second half draws strength from the central relationship between Buck and Thornton,
the latter of whom is only a peripheral figure throughout its first half. Intriguingly,
this camaraderie strikes a more nuanced note than just the everyday human
master and his pet dynamic, where both of them are like friends that need each
other to help them get by. In that sense, their bond is mutually beneficial. Thornton
is spiritually a stray similar to Buck, a broken man dealing with extreme grief
and alcoholism who, by virtue of one cute alcohol intervention scene, needs
Buck to knock over Thornton’s liquor, burying it to get him to quit.
Some of the movie’s most emotional impact
is greatly enhanced by John Powell’s
exquisite score and Janusz Kaminski’s
impeccable cinematography, both of whom help evoke shades of Yukon’s natural
beauty with impressive skill and panache.
Powell is no stranger to collaborating with Sanders on a human-animal relationship movie, having done so before in How to Train Your Dragon, and their
sophomoric joint effort proves that they’re a match made in heaven. There’s a
lilting, melancholic melody to his composition that gradually transports the
viewers into a realm of the dreamlike and fantastical. On an aesthetic level, Kaminski, Steven Spielberg’s frequent director of photography, has the eye for
gorgeous scenery to summon the realm Powell
has imagined into existence. He fills the screen with many epic, arresting wide
shots of vistas that are a feast for the eyes.
For the most part, the Call of the Wild is only less than the sum of its parts. And the
major flaw here, the one that made everyone on the Internet who had seen the
trailer cringe, is none other than the filmmakers’ decision to replace all the
real animals with fully CGI creations, a baffling technical innovation which ends
up dragging the animal drama to uncanny valley horror where movies of this ilk
don’t belong.
Considering the fact that it’s been done
at the behest of PETA and fellow animal rights activists following Hollywood’s long
history with animal cruelty on movie sets, it’s unfortunate that their best
intentions are undone by the dodgy, cringe-worthy execution. It’s as if they’ve
taken the industry’s collective ethical fears a tiny bit too far. It’s only made
worse when Disney +’s Togo (2019),
another movie with more or less the same premise as the Call of the Wild, proves that their ambition can be achieved safely
through a mix of real animals for the simpler stunts and CGI animals for the
dangerous stunts, hence making it seem like the filmmakers here are lazy and
unambitious.
As its lead star, Buck inevitably becomes
the scapegoat for this CGI mess. Buck is just a poorly-rendered creation that
never transcends its computer generated origins. Never has a CGI dog look quite
as lost in a live-action movie as good old Buck. With his dead zombie eyes, digital
fur, limitedly robotic facial expression and herky-jerky movements, this movie
has given birth to a special effect nightmare that leans much closer to the
cartoonish live-action Scooby Doo from the two recent Scooby Doo movies (2002-2004) than photorealism. The visual effect
artists are pulling themselves into so many directions with Buck’s design to
the point where the character eventually becomes a curious anomaly, an alleged
dog that doesn’t know how to be a dog. As a cute-dog flick, this version of Buck
is sorely lacking in the cute-dog department.
And the main character’s aforementioned look
should foretell doom in a movie with an excessive use of CGI for some of the wilderness
scenery. Every blade of grass, every face of a snowy cliff, every tree and pretty
much everything is recreated by a computer in such a glossy, all-too-perfect manner
it’s basically a virtual reality idea of what the wilderness looks like in
real-life. It ruins the story’s entire illusion and credibility as a survival
movie or even, to a certain extent, as a live-action movie.
The effects project a sheen of artifice that
makes some of the wilderness sequences come across as video game cut sequences,
one of the most glaring happens early on when Buck is playfully chasing a
rabbit down the forest. This sleek visual instead takes the element of danger
away from the movie. There are a couple action set-pieces involving the dogs in
peril that are weightless, bereft of suspense, tension or any sense that there
is ever any flesh and blood involved. There is this one big sequence where a
mail delivery sled dog team, led by Buck, must navigate through a heavy,
life-threatening snowstorm to get from one place to another, and yet, it looks so
inauthentic it’s hard to care about the fate of these CGI sled dogs in the
midst of an obvious CGI snowstorm. There is also a huge disconnect between the
CGI surroundings and the live-action elements throughout the movie. From that
snowstorm scene alone, the notion that the human characters and maybe, just
maybe a real sled are the only things that qualify as live-action make it seem
all the more obvious that they’re standing in front of a green screen, thus failing
to convince its viewers that these people and objects inhabit the same reality
as its CGI world.
Besides the CGI problems, the production
design is disappointingly sloppy for a big-budget Hollywood production. The
setting just lacks the period details and lived-in feel that’s often associated
with its gritty source material. The state of the world and even the lifestyle
of the people in the Yukon wilderness during the 19th century are only
half-realized. Movie sets act like rather than embody reality and the same goes
with the actors and extras portraying the Yukon folks, existing only within the
fabric of the narrative and ceasing to exist when the camera stops filming. The
several towns that Buck visits throughout his journey in Yukon resemble completely
fabricated sets built on a studio back-lot, with the cotton-like snow and
plywood architectures, so much that even the fakery of the Western TV show sets
in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019) would
pass easily as a real, functioning town by comparison.
Sanders’ the Call
of the Wild suffers from uneven pacing. There are scenes that are so rushed
it seems as if the story is skimping on the basics and then there are some that
are so drawn out it seems as if the story isn’t going anywhere. The movie never
lands on a single definitive tone, wanting to be a grounded and playful dog
story all at once but it’s too afraid to embrace either the gloomier or the
brighter aspects of a dog’s life. It struggles to maintain any true forward
momentum, stopping and starting without ever really taking off.
As a result, there are a handful of subplots
that isn’t treated with the same respect, discarded as soon as it was
introduced. The movie shows very little interest in exploring the early years
of Buck’s life. His time with supporting characters like his first master Judge
Miller (Bradley Whitford) in
California or even with his abusive kidnappers are largely sidelined in favor
of lengthening the time spent establishing some sort of personal relationship
between Buck and the other supporting characters, a pair of mail deliverers Perrault
(Omar Sy) and Francoise (Cara Gee), in which the affection is close
to nonexistent. Furthermore, this section doesn’t do much for Buck’s character
growth.
Let’s not forget another supporting character
and the worst: an aristocratic villain Hal (Dan Stevens) and his pursuit for gold subplot. Regardless of him
being a character that has been there since the 1903 novel, here, he seems
shoehorned in for the sake of a studio-mandated big blockbuster ending. And
Hal’s caricaturish characterization seems out of place to the movie Sanders is making, with his Saturday
Morning cartoon big baddie antics being a stark contrast to the more serious
undercurrent throughout the Call of the
Wild.
The acting though is quite commendable. In
a movie blessed with reputable talents of the past and present such as Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens and Karen Gillan,
just to name a few, it should not come as a surprise that they can be relied
upon to add some substance to their parts, however big or small it may be. But
this intriguing cast is squandered by a director who is unsure of where to
navigate his ship. Here, Sanders’
relative inexperience at the helm of a live-action feature clearly shows. His
actors don’t seem like they’re on the same wavelength with each other, nor do
some of them seem to have a clue of what movie they’re actually in.
Harrison
Ford
is the sole exception, having a firmer grasp of the material than its director.
Taking on the co-lead role of Buck’s beloved master John Thornton, Ford delivers such a deeply,
consistently affecting performance which allows him to step out of his Han
Solo/Indiana Jones action hero image and show off his fine dramatic chops. He
infuses genuine pathos and his trademark grizzled everyman charm that grounds
Thornton’s palpable sweetness in realism. This extends to creating a believable
chemistry with the dog Buck, a CGI creation, which, by making people forget
that the dog’s CGI, even for some time, is quite a miraculous achievement.
Speaking of that aforementioned CGI dog,
the perennial motion capture actor Terry
Notary (who is criminally uncredited for his work in this movie) shows
undeniable commitment once again to his craft, doing his best in aping a canine
behavior while also giving it a slightly self-aware human twist as the stand-in
for the movie’s main character Buck. Notary’s
intense, transformative physicality breathes life into the virtually wordless role
of Buck, conveying through simple gestures or the spring in his step the
character’s wit, intelligence, compassion and strength so well it’s almost a blasphemy
that the final CGI design doesn’t do him any justice at all.
Omar
Sy
delightfully captures the adventurous spirit of Francoise, a mail delivery man
and one of Buck’s masters. Sy doesn’t
have as much screentime as Ford obviously,
but he is a terrific screen presence nonetheless, bringing some heart and sense
of humor to his every lighthearted banter and heart-to-heart moment with Buck. On
the other side of the spectrum, Dan
Stevens is woefully miscast as the movie’s main villain Hal. Stevens’ acting here is one-note at
best, ill-advised at worst. It’s a confusing hodgepodge of laughable Elmer Fudd
shticks and inappropriate Jack Torrance impersonation that’s too childish for
the adults and too creepy for the kids respectively.
As far as the rest of the live-action
actors go, many are given lesser to do than all the names mentioned above. Cara Gee is pretty entertaining but
ultimately forgettable as Francoise’s trusted, hot-tempered assistant Perrault,
whose only contribution to the movie is by throwing Buck out of a camp. There
are glimmers of Karen Gillan’s vast
comedic range in a few occasions as Hal’s sister and a spoiled aristocrat
Mercedes, but there’s not enough to suggest anything more than a glorified
cameo. As capable of a performer as he is, Bradley
Whitford is sleepwalking through the thankless role of Buck’s first master Judge
Miller.
CONCLUSION:
The
Call of the Wild
boasts a likable, charming chemistry between a man and a dog at its center, but
that’s not enough to save it from being a soulless, uninvolving and technologically
misguided effort that never quite justify adapting Jack London’s novel into live-action.
Score: 5.5/10
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