Video from the film's set appearing to show a frightened German shepherd being forced to perform a water stunt was leaked earlier this month to gossip site TMZ. The ensuing controversy has cast a pall over the film and forced the cancellation of its scheduled red carpet premiere in Los Angeles this past weekend.
This review will not be the place to sort out whether the incident caught on film was a genuine ethical breach or a mere foofaraw, though it should be noted the film's producer has issued a response that calls into question the video's context. Needless to say, there are some who will skip the film based on this issue alone, and I won't be one to argue they shouldn't.
Of course, there also are other groups of people who probably should skip this film.
Most obviously, if you find it hard to endure cinematic depictions of a dog's death — historically, the Defcon 5 of emotionally manipulative movie tropes — you might want to skip this film. In sort of a mash-up of Marley and Me and Groundhog Day, A Dog's Purpose chronicles several decades in the lives (yes, plural) of a dog who keeps dying and being reincarnated, over and over and over again. No doubt, just as the world is full of roller-coaster enthusiasts, there are some emotional masochists who would actively seek out this kind of repeated gut punch. If you're not among that group of sick twists, do yourself a favor and stay home.
Or, for instance, if you're the sort of person who found the Look Who's Talking films to be cloying and insipid, you might want to skip this film. It appropriates that franchise's signature gimmick of providing running commentary from an oh-so-adorably naïve narrator — in this case, a dog instead of a baby, and the voice of Josh Gad rather than that of Bruce Willis — who is repeatedly confused but delighted by all the wonderfully quirky details in the lives of adult humans. (Plus, poop jokes. Lots of poop jokes.) It does absolutely nothing to improve on what was already a pretty hackneyed formula back in 1988. And, to paraphrase another cultural touchstone from 1988, Josh Gad….you're no Bruce Willis.
Actually, it's probably fair to say that if you are over 12 years old, you might want to skip this film. One should absolutely not go in expecting anything in remotely the same universe as director Lasse Hallström's early films like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? or Chocolat. It is, instead, the sort of schlock you'd expect from the director of a third-tier ABC Family drama, were he or she asked to conceive of a two-hour dog food commercial.
Then again, if you are under 12 years old, you also might want to skip this film. See earlier, re: dying dogs.
If you are sensitive to cultural stereotypes about the poor, you might want to skip this film, which appears to insist they are uniformly neglectful monsters who keep their dogs chained up outside in bad weather, abandon them on country roads or leave them to die in the back of hot pickup trucks. The not-so-subtle message is that only the comfortably middle class deserve canine companionship.
Or if you are a dog owner given to neuroses, you might want to skip this film. No doubt part of the appeal of the original W. Bruce Cameron novel on which the movie is based is the hope it offers to those who have lost a beloved pet that you might actually be reunited again. But on the flip side, one of the unspoken implications of the cosmology presented in A Dog's Purpose is that, no matter how close and loving your bond may be, your dog could actually still be pining for the boy who owned him three or four lives ago.
Of course, if you are the sort given to thinking about cosmology in the first place, you might want to skip this film. Despite its ponderous title and the pretensions of its opening monologue, one should be under no illusion that it actually takes spiritual matters like reincarnation seriously. We don't learn if "Dog" (he/she has many names over the course of the film) is stuck in the Buddhist cycle of saṃsāra, nor whether there is any hope of achieving nirvana. Does suffering as a police dog in one life entitle you to existence as a pampered corgi in the next? A Dog's Purpose offers no thoughts on the question.
All in all, if you are the sort of person who goes in to a movie expecting to be presented with characters who are interesting, performed by actors who are talented, moving about in a story that's worth telling and all shot in a way that's visually pleasing, you might want to skip this movie.
On the other hand, the dogs really are cute. Until they die. Over and over and over again.
The first of the buddha's Four Noble Truths is often summarized as "life is suffering." So is the experience of watching this movie. Perhaps it's deeper than I thought.
A Dog's Purpose
1.5 out of 5 stars
Rated PG. Directed by Lasse Hallström
Starring KJ Apa, Dennis Quaid and Josh Gad
Opens Jan. 27
This article appears in Jan 19-26, 2017.