Dan Slevin is emotionally mauled by a very cute canine in A Dog’s Way Home.
Bella (Shelby) in Columbia Pictures’ A Dog’s Way Home. Photo: Sony
I can’t remember the last time I was as nakedly manipulated by a film as I was by A Dog’s Way Home and, you know, I’m not sure that I mind all that much.
Based on the second of W. Bruce Cameron’s “A Dog’s…” novels – the first of which, A Dog’s Purpose has already spawned a moderately successful big screen adaptation – A Dog’s Way Home follows adorable mutt Bella from her rescue as a puppy to escape from corrupt animal control people to a tortuous and life-affirming journey across the American South West back to her family.
Older readers might remember a Disney movie about pets making a cross-country voyage – The Incredible Journey from 1963 (remade in 1993) – and this film follows a similar wilderness trajectory without the utter tweeness of the animals talking to each other through the voices of well-known actors. It has only a moderate level of tweeness, based on the fact that Bella the dog narrates this story with the voice of Bryce Dallas Howard.
Photo: Sony
Bella is rescued as a puppy from an evil property developer who wants to demolish some old house without ensuring that the stray animals who live beneath are safely re-homed. Bella’s owner, Lucas (English actor Jonah Hauer-King), works at the local veteran’s hospital where his mother (Ashley Judd) is an out-patient. Bella is a boisterous and loving puppy but not all that welcome in the neighbourhood as the evil property developer leans on the animal control authorities to take revenge on Lucas for thwarting his condominium plans.
Falsely labelled a pit bull, Bella is packed off to Lucas’ girlfriend’s parents in New Mexico to escape a fate worse than death. Actually, a fate exactly like death.
Not realising that she was in exile for her own good, Bella soon escapes and tries to get home to Denver – roughly 400 scenic miles – and on her nearly three-year journey she meets multiple prospective new human owners and she manages to raise a cougar kitten whose own mother has been shot by hunters.
Ashley Judd, Shelby the dog, Rolando Boyce and Annie Nelson in a scene from the movie A Dog's Way Home. Photo: Sony
Designed by NASA scientists to push all the relevant emotional buttons in adults and children, occasionally A Dog’s Way Home manages to break through with something lovely and real (especially the focus on the veterans trauma), but mostly it is let down by the digital manipulation of the other animals and the cinematic manipulation of its audience. You will feel things, but you will also feel as if you are being taken for a ride. But sometimes that’s just what you need.
A Dog’s Way Home is playing on selected screens across New Zealand now. bring your tissues.
