Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Josh Gad, KJ Apa, Dennis Quaid, Britt Robertson, Peggy Lipton, John Ortiz, Kirby Howell-Baptiste
Intro:
A Dog's Purpose is an unapologetically sentimental film, and whether it's sweet or saccharine is very much a subjective call.
A dog (voiced by Josh Gad) experiences several incarnations and lives with several families over the course of a few decades in this adaptation of W. Bruce Cameron’s novel by director, Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale).
Yes, incarnations, as in reincarnation – dogs are on the karmic wheel in the cosmology of A Dog’s Purpose, letting the film have its cake (plenty of sad scenes of dying pooches) and eat it (he’s back as a cute widdle puppy!). Along the way, Bailey (he gets several names, but let’s stick with this one for convenience) experiences life as a feral puppy, a police dog, and an overfed corgi, but it’s his lives that intersect with that of Ethan (played at various life stages by Bryce Gheisar, KJ Apa, and Dennis Quaid) that hold the most meaning. Through Bailey’s eyes we see Ethan grow up under an abusive, alcoholic father, fall in love, deal with disappointment after an injury kills his college football career, and so on. While Bailey’s lives are, when you get right down to it, a montage of cute animal antics and heart string-pulling deaths, it’s Ethan’s life arc that forms the film’s sine and gives it something approaching meaning.
A Dog’s Purpose is an unapologetically sentimental film, and whether it’s sweet or saccharine is very much a subjective call. It manipulates the audience’s emotions in some very obvious and crude ways, which can be a turn off. Conversely, there are some very cute dogs here, and some decent performances. KJ Apa is a standout, getting to be more Archie-like here than he does in Riverdale, and Dennis Quaid is typically solid as the elder Ethan.
Ultimately, A Dog’s Purpose is a film for people who like dogs more than they like movies. By no stretch of the imagination is it a great work of art, but it has its moments.
