When I first saw the preview for this film, I thought I perfectly knew what to except. I excepted a cute little dog movie that would never go down as a great film, but offered an enjoyable time at the movies. I was dead wrong. In my defense though I don't know how I could have possible excepted anything as terrible as this movie turned out to be. This film was as painful of a movie going experience as is possible.
For a movie where Kevin Costner plays a dog that wants to be a racecar driver, this film is almost completely devoid of light and fun moments. For the majority of this movie, the film just seems to throw as many depressing movie clichés as possible. The problem with this is moments of lightness and levity are very important. Without them the depressing-ness becomes just repetitive. I soon grew tired of it and just completely stopped caring. Even the dog's narration about how he wants to be human becomes a depressing dirge, as he starts to talk about how powerless he is to do anything about what happens around him. Actually much of the dog's narration is simply him pondering on depressing subjects. The seriousness of this pondering makes matters worse as it makes us feel like we are actually supposed to take the ridiculousness of this premise seriously. It is true that most films are emotionally manipulative but we aren't supposed to feel like we are being manipulated. Here the film feels like it is constantly manipulating you. This dragged on for what felt like an eternity. I had to try to play the game of "try and guess how this could become more depressing” just to keep myself somewhat interested in what was happening on the screen. Strangely what seems to be one of the few points of "humor" during these scenes involves a stuffed zebra killing other stuffed animals to Alice Cooper's No More Mr. Nice Guy (no I am actually not making this up). Not only does this hardly lighten up the proceedings but I have no idea how anyone can possible find this funny. It is instead just bizarre and out of place. I even left the theatre in shock over whatever that was.
This film is also paced and just put together horribly. It almost seems to take some perverse delight in going from tragedy to tragedy as quickly as possible. Because of this we never slow down to actually get to know the characters. This serves two major problems. It becomes hard to relate to these characters on any level since they hardly have anything like a personality. Also these types of scenes would have given us a much needed break from each tragedy making the film seem much less repetitive.
I won't give it away, but the ending was horribly laughable and forced.
This is a complete mess of a movie and a painful viewing experience. Seriously avoid this at all costs.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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