‘Dog’ Review: Man and Beast Hit the Road
Highway comedies that pair an animal and a film star are a minor style unto themselves. One of the best examples, in my view, contain Clint Eastwood and an orangutan named Clyde, although the latest one with Eastwood and a rooster wasn’t unhealthy. Channing Tatum is a unique sort of display presence — sweeter, chattier, bulkier — and in “Canine,” which he directed with Reid Carolin, he amiably shares the display with (spoiler alert!) a canine.
She is a Belgian Malinois named Lulu (performed by three gifted canines), and she or he has served within the U.S. army in Iraq and Afghanistan. So has Tatum’s character, Jackson Briggs, a former Military Ranger dwelling in a cabin within the Northwest. A historical past of mind accidents has saved him out of motion, however he hopes {that a} good phrase from his commanding officer will give him an opportunity to return abroad.
To make that occur, Jackson agrees to accompany Lulu from Fort Lewis, Ore., to Nogales, Ariz. The rationale for the street journey is the funeral of her handler, a Ranger whose demise in a automobile crash haunts Jackson and the movie. Whereas “Canine” is a man-beast buddy film, it’s additionally preoccupied with grief, trauma and the challenges of post-combat life. Lulu and Jackson are each wounded warriors who should study to belief one another and assist one another heal.
Although a lot is manufactured from Lulu’s ferociousness, the movie’s humor is light and largely unthreatening. She chews up the seats in Jackson’s already battered Ford Bronco, disrupts his potential threesome with a pair of Tantra practitioners in Portland and causes an unlucky ruckus in a San Francisco lodge. Jackson has variously awkward, hostile and touching human encounters, notably with New Age hashish growers and a resentful, racist police officer.
“Canine” is unabashedly sentimental. A film a couple of canine and a soldier might hardly be in any other case. Fortunately, Tatum’s self-deprecating attraction and Carolin’s script preserve the story on the tolerable facet of maudlin. It’s additionally circumspect about Lulu and Jackson’s experiences of warfare, which is vaguely understood as one thing horrible but in addition wonderful. Neither one is as complicated as an actual canine or an actual man can be, which makes the film a straightforward watch, however at the price of some credibility. It’s pleasant and desperate to please, nevertheless it received’t fairly hunt.
Canine
Rated PG-13. Extra barking than biting. Operating time: 1 hour half-hour. In theaters.
