Review: "A Dog's Way Home"

Two years ago W. Bruce Cameron's novel "A Dog's Purpose" became a smash hit, barraging us with waves of pooch-ie cuteness and pathos. No surprise that he wrote another book and they've made another movie out of it, "A Dog's Way Home."

Instead of a metaphysical musing about a dog's living through multiple lifetimes as it figures out its role in the cosmos, here the protagonist, Bella (emotively voice by Bryce Dallas Howard), knows from the get-go what her purpose is: to be there for her human, Lucas. He's played by Jonah Hauer-King, who's tall and non-threatening and has impossible dimples.

They get separated by circumstance and Bella has to undertake an epic journey across two states to find her way home. These include encounters with humans good and bad, face-offs with wolves and an unlikely partnership with a CGI mountain lion. It's a little bit scary, a little bit sad, a little bit sappy and a whole lot adorable.

I felt about this movie the same as I did its predecessor: it's a great big cream-puff of a movie, unambitious but undeniably sweet. It's the rare family picture that will please audiences from 3 to 93.

You know Bella's going to reunite with Lucas in the end, but it's still a tender moment. My 5-year-old bawled tears of joy. (Dad may have had something in his eye, too...)

Bellas begins life living in a condemned wreck of a house along with dozens of cats. When her mother is impounded by the meanie animal control officer, she's raised by a "mother cat" and later joins up with Lucas, who lives across the street and works in a VA clinic that treats troubled vets. One of them is his mother (Ashley Judd), whose depression is helped by a scrabby pup.

Because she's a pit bull mix -- although the actress dog looks more like a lab/shepherd blend to these eyes -- the Denver city ordinance prevents her from being off her home property. Transferred to a temporary stay in New Mexico with some friends while Lucas sorts things out, she jumps the fence and her travails begin.

I won't belabor all her journey, though a few incidents stand out. This includes coming across a baby cougar whose mother is killed by hunters, which allows Bella to become a cat mother herself to the critter she dubs "big kitten." For awhile she becomes the (rather coerced) companion of Axel (Edward James Olmos), a homeless veteran who's desperate for a friend.

After an avalanche fells the owner of a border collie named Dutch, Bella finds herself paired up in an ad-hoc foster family with a nice gay couple. Bella likes it there, appreciates the companionship and security. But always she feels the pull of "an invisible leash" urging her to return to Lucas.

The movie is directed by Charles Martin Smith, who knows from dog tales having starred in the lovely "The Company of Wolves" back in the day. The screenplay is by Cameron and Cathryn Michon, who also co-wrote "Purpose" and previously collaborated on a non-dog movie, "Muffin Top: A Love Story."

It's brightly-shot, with pitch-perfect animal expressions and a few decent human ones, too. What can I say? Only a certified dog-hater could dislike this flick.

Review: "A Dog's Purpose"

“A Dog’s Purpose” is an unrepentant tearjerker, as movies about dogs often are.

There’s just an indescribable purity about a dog. Treat it well, and it will return that to you in the form of boundless love. A dog will wait hours in your office while you do stuff they consider dreadfully boring (like writing a movie review), hoping for a chance at five minutes of playtime.

They may not be great for the pocketbook -- how much for flea medicine again?? -- but when it comes to spiritual replenishment, the ROI on dogs cannot be beaten.

Director Lasse Hallström, who made the seminal “My Life As a Dog” 30-odd years ago, gives us a fanciful tale of a super canine, a red retriever named Bailey who lives out several lives during the course of the movie, always being resurrected as a puppy with a new chance at finding its reason for existing.

Josh Gad, with that incredibly flexible voice of his, narrates Bailey as he morphs into Ellie, a German Shepherd police dog, a Corgi named Tito with a tremendous appetite, and a big hound named Buddy. He retains his memories as Bailey, and strives to do good by the humans in his life, despite some of them not being very caring owners.

The strongest relationship is with Ethan, a boy growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s. He’s played by Bryce Gheisar as a kid and K.J. Apa as a teen. They’re inseparable buds, even when Ethan becomes the star quarterback on the high school football team and starts dating Hannah (Britt Robertson), who’s clearly The One.

But dark stuff in Ethan’s family and circumstances push things in a darker direction, with Bailey trying to make sense of it all from his perspective underneath the kitchen table. In his simplistic paradigm where sniffing, eating, playing and licking are the sum total secrets to happiness, humans are a tremendous conundrum.

Let’s talk about controversy. Or rather, nontroversy. There’s a video floating around of one of the dog actors for the film being pushed into water by its trainer during production. It got scared but was not hurt or ever in any danger. Some activist types are pushing a boycott of the movie as a result. Please. People who call that animal abuse have obviously never seen real animal abuse. I did worse than that to my pooch last weekend when she stole a piece of pizza.

It does appear to have had an effect, which it is my duty to report. For starters, the movie is a lot shorter than the 120-minute running time that’s been published. It appears something like 20 minutes have been hastily cut out. The credits also list a bunch more people as screenwriters besides Cathryn Michon, who adapted the novel by W. Bruce Cameron. And the Hollywood premier was scrapped.

OK? Got all that? Let’s get back to reviewing the movie.

This is not an especially clever or sophisticated film. Dogs do things to make us happy, dogs do things to make us sad. Life (or rather, lives) unfold with the requisite mix of joy, betrayal, tragedy and pathos.

I’m not giving anything away in saying that the story eventually returns to Ethan and Hannah, a half-century later, now played by Dennis Quaid and Peggy Lipton. We know what’s going to happen, the dog knows what’s going to happen, and it’s just a matter of waiting until the people catch up.

But doggarnit, if you don’t shed a few tears and crack a few smiles during “A Dog’s Purpose,” then there’s no hope for you.