THE CALL OF THE WILD (2020) FILM REVIEW

****

PG, 99 Mins

Stunning motion capture work lends this shaggy dog story a big, BIG heart.

One thing you can guarantee from your dog is unconditional love. Something a human can never offer no matter how hard they try. It's this very unconditional love that both this movie and its canine star offers Harrison Ford and its audiences. And, believe me, us audiences will truly want to love it unconditionally back.

'The Call of the Wild' (2020) is the latest in a long line of adaptations of Jack London's 1903 short novel of the same name about a stolen St. Bernard travelling across the Canadian wilderness with only a man (Harrison Ford) and his gun for company. It's a literary classic that has seen 'Little Women' numbers of umpteen big screen renditions starting with a silent movie in 1923. The first "talkie" version would follow with Clarke Gable in 1935 although arguably the best beloved one was the 1972 Charlton Heston-starrer - not the most faithful, but certainly most mainstream. A 1978 Snoopy TV special was to come along with a 1981 anime film with Bryan Cranston pre-'Breaking Bad'. All this before the purist take - 'The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon' (1997) - starring Rutger Hauer and three dog actors.

This 7th re-imagining - a strapping, populist romp - doesn't feature four-legged actors although Terry Notary's extraordinary performance as the big, soppy St. Bernard Buck is so photorealist it might make you wonder whether he were a dog in previous realms! He breathes life into the barking creature through mesmerising motion capture technology. Not simply CGI gimmickery, this wondrous art allows actors to embody the movements and mannerisms of real animals. Anything in excess is unhealthy as 'Cats' (2019) purrrrrvertly proved. However - in moderation - performance capture can seamlessly bridge the divide between the real and the unreal while standard CGI only sits on the latter side of this division.

'The Call of the Wild' builds the bridge beautifully. Like Andy Serkis inhabited the chest-beating physicality of Apes in the recent 'Planet of the Apes' (2011-2017) movies and 'King Kong' (2005), Notary nails our shaggy canine hero's woofings and sloppy tongue to a tee. What's particularly impressive is that he manages to give a CGI character "weight" - a trait too many "animations" lack. It was certainly missing from last year's lacklustre remake of 'The Lion King' (2019) which was such a weightless affair.  

In this movie, you'll have to slap yourself with a garden hoe to wake up to the fact that you're watching a computer-generated beast. Never has a dog seemed so "human". Despite essentially wearing animal "make-up", Notary conveys a complex range of emotions - especially pathos and poignancy - as naturally as Harrison Ford. In fact, big Buck actually out-acts Mr. Ford off screen.

There's real charm in seeing man and dog interact and Notary (aka Buck) and Ford have the most lovely chemistry. The simple sight of the two curled up around the fireplace is enough to make even the hardest heart melt although arguably these are exactly the heart-strings the film is deliberately tickling. It's a testament then that I never found the film's sentiments manipulative in the slightest. This may come down to my love of sticky sentimentality and the fact that dogs really do evoke the fuzziest emotions in people, but 'The Call of the Wild' earns the right to be sweet and soft in its "man's best friend" scenes thanks to the toughness of its earlier segments.

A palpable sense of danger coats shots of wincing animal cruelty when Buck is initially kidnapped and subjected to club and whip. As someone with zero tolerance for violence against animals, I kept having to remind myself that no creatures were harmed during the production. It didn't make these sequences any easier to watch and I continued to squirm during a tooth n' claw brawl between two dogs jostling for heirarchical control of their pack. These are all very real issues facing dogs and many other animals today. They lend 'The Call of the Wild' true-life grit to compliment the gooeyness of the central friendship.

Amid the darkness comes mouth-watering imagery from Janusz Kaminski - Steven Spielberg's legendary cinematographer. The movie is almost Malickian in its aesthetic; bursting with a passion for nature in all its audacity. Snowy, sinewy North American landscapes are sprawling, sweeping and seemingly endless with real locations definitely tampered with via computer. I'm not generally a massive fan of computer-generated imagery, but ironically Director Chris Sanders uses such to the film's advantage. He sprinkles just the right amount of laptop glitz on top of the tundras to make them even more majestic for the multiplex. 

Safe to say, I loved this movie. I love it as unconditionally as Buck loves his owner and his viewers. Bring tissues because there will not be a dry eye in the room, but this suceeds as both a total heartwarmer and as a rip-roaring adventure for all the family. The OSCARS made a bold and brilliant choice awarding 'Parasite' (2020) the Best Picture prize. Now their next hurdle to overcome needs to be recognizing motion capture acting. Terry Notary's portrayal of a dog is as good as if not better than most people playing mankind.
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