Arctic Dogs Review
PG: For some mild action and rude humorRuntime: 1 Hour and 32 MinutesProduction Companies: AMBI Group, AIC Studios, Assemblage EntertainmentDistributor: Entertainment StudiosDirector: Aaron WoodleyWriters: Bob Barlen, Cal Brunker, Aaron WoodleyVoice Cast: Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum, James Franco, John Cleese, Omar Sy, Michael Madsen, Laurie Holden, Anjelica Huston, Alec BaldwinRelease Date: November 1, 2019Every now and then, I go on Cartoon Brew and Animation News Network to find the latest updates in the field of animation for both television and film. I love rooting for animated features and seeing projects prosper from date of announcement to sheets of concept art and any form of progression that comes with them as they make their way to the silver screen. I remember when I came across the concept art for Arctic Dogs, which was initially titled Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad (which you must admit is a badass title) and I was intrigued. Even the initial synopsis was interesting to me… AT THE TIME!When the sinister Doc Walrus hatches a secret plot to accelerate global warming and melt the arctic circle, a rag-tag group of inexperienced heroes must come together to foil his evil plans and save the arctic.It sounded enticing enough to me.That was 2015. This was in the pipeline for over 4 years and it went through distribution hell! It was picked up by Open Road, but last September they filed for bankruptcy. Then, it got picked up by Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures (the most redundant distributor name ever best known for the 47 Meters Down franchise). It is now 2019. The resurgence of this feature being “relevant” to me was so bizarre that it pulled the rug from under me. I think it was at AMC Lincoln Square where I came across the large standee… just sitting there and existing, looking like the most generic animated movie ever. It only took a split second before I realized, “Holy shit, this is Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad! Why the hell did it go through a retitle?” When I went home, I looked through my EPK, found the trailer and just went:
I swore this movie had to be a front for a money laundering/tax evasion scheme because I couldn’t believe something that was at least moderately intriguing by synopsis got bogged down to the most derivative storyline an animated film could have.I knew I wasn’t going to get a press screening for this. I admit I got excited when I logged into my AMC A-List account to reserve a seat and found myself to be the only audience member who had done so. When I arrived, there was only one grown man (hopefully he was a critic too) in the 45-seat auditorium with me. Just to think… this shit is opening in (hehe) 2,844 theaters across America!
Meet Swifty. He’s an arctic fox who lives in a small town and dreams of being a courier to work amongst huskies—the “top dogs” of the village—and deliver packages. His time comes once he goes against his boss’ wishes and delivers a package to an evil walrus who moves on a mechanical machine with plans of drilling the earth and melting the polar ice caps (along with a team of puffins working as his minions). Once the walrus makes a one-off statement about disliking couriers, two of his puffins go out and capture the actual top dogs, leaving Swifty as the only Fox for the job a-- oh god, screw this. I fell asleep. Reader, I slept. It’s one thing to be a terrible animated movie with a shitty story, but it’s another thing to be BORING as hell.
You got Frozen II around the corner, you know your kids ain’t clamoring to see Arctic Dogs, and if they are, disown them! Just kidding, but holy crap there is no need for this to be on the big screen. For a 3D CG animated movie, Arctic Dogs is an embarrassment. A large sum of the animation is incomplete in terms of rendering, shadowing, and continuity. There are a lot of continuity errors going on here and the majority of the issues involve the characters within their environment. Some of the textures of the settings aren’t rendered to completion. Early on, there’s a sequence where the leads go down a mountain on a sled and their trail is inconsistent. I’m not trying to pay too much attention to detail when it comes to this, but for a 50-million-dollar budget, consistency shouldn’t be so difficult. Now, I don't know how much was spent on animation services, but it surely wasn't enough. The settings are few and limited, but once you see everything to scale you notice how the characters look out of place amongst their environment. The character designs are as generic as any animated feature set on anthropomorphic animals. You’ve got big heads, big eyes, a skinny body… they’re just Nick Wilde’s designs from Zootopia with a few modifications to make it look more marketable in terms of cuteness because BIG EYES ARE APPEALING and boom, you got this bland fox.
The voice acting is atrocious. None of the voice actors give a shit and it feels as if they’re reading lines with no personality (Alec Baldwin, Heidi Klum, James Franco, John Cleese) and if they have a personality, they’re just doing an accent (Anjelica Huston). Renner is the only person who gives a shit due to him being the lead and providing original music for the soundtrack, but everyone around him is clearly there to get a nice check. Finally… the story. The bare bones of it all is so dull as it strips the faux fame and “be yourself” message and applies it to the lamest plot ever. To get down to it, the lead wants to be a fucking UPS driver. That’s the plot. What is so engaging about watching an incompetent, self-centered arctic fox go out of his way to be a courier?! Like, after one little delivery, he’s hailed as a hero and starts to think he’s top shit… just for delivering packages. Couriers. It's what every kid wants to grow up to be! It hits all the generic beats of the “be yourself” archetype and manages to be so boring, hollow, lifeless, and unfunny! The script, written by the dudes who wrote classics such as Escape From Planet Earth, The Nut Job, and Spark: A Space Tail (if you are aware of any of these titles, good on you), is full of such generic dialogue and humor emphasized by dated references that dial back to a play on In Living Color’s Homey the Clown. What kid will fucking get the “Homey, don’t play that” reference? Like, come on! What makes this worse than other cheap animated features is that the animation lacks movement or freneticism. Every scene has poor storyboard composition and awkward comedic timing. The humor either tries to skate by with reactionary shots or by incorporating cartoonish sound effects and they’re all so poorly timed. If you wanna talk about a shitty wintery animated fare, I favor Norm of the North over this because, although the animation there is slightly weaker, at least it was frenetic and the story was outrageously weird that it’s—fuck me for saying this—slightly engaging. Neither film deserves to be on the fucking big screen whatsoever, and no one deserves to be in a bargain bin at a Rite Aid, but this is just so boring. Hey, at least I got a good nap. Other than that, fuck this movie. Kids, if your parent puts this on for you, they clearly don’t love you.Rating: 0/5 | 9%
