Tag: Hollywood

Show Dogs

Posted on by Alasdair Bayman

M an’s unconditional love for his canine friend has been expressed throughout cinematic and world history. Exhibited earlier this year in Wes Anderson’s touching Isle of Dogs, the undying affections shared between man and animal have not been more poetically expressed since De Sica’s Umberto D (1952) and the little Jack Russell Flike. On the reverse side of this artistic expression, peculiar films as Cats and Dogs (Lawrence Guterman, 2001) use CGI to its mischievous advantage to depict real dogs imitating human speech, thus taking anthropomorphism to a whole new meaning. Following in the pawsteps of such noughties releases, Show Dogs resurrects this family-friendly entertainment in a narrative template that has been seen a thousand times over.

Slowly becoming the auteur of the talking dog film, Raja Gosnell’s previous filmography brings a level of predictability to the unfolding events of his fourth feature on the titular creature. Rottweiler Max (Ludacris) is a brooding NYPD dog who is the best in the business. Exhibiting his strengths in a flashy opening sequence that introduces the film’s mcguffin – a rare baby Panda – the CGI talking extends to some eye wateringly bad computerised dog front flips and sliding, all done by Max to chase down the bad guys. Stolen from China by a cocky villain Berne (Andy Beckwith) for a rich client, you know it’s a piece of Hollywood produced pulp entertainment when the villain has a British co-criminal. In a cross specifies moment of CGI dialogue, Max promises to the little Panda that he will save him – hence the tedious narrative driving force of the film.

Thankfully for Max, a real-life human being is forced to accompany him on his mission. Frank (Will Arnett) is initially antagonistic towards Max from the first scene, still, they must work together to evidently stop animal cruelty once and for all. Flying to the dizzy heights of Las Vegas, the dog show proves to be the complete antithesis from the reserved, tweed counterparts at Crufts and The Kennel Club. Accompanied by the finest ear blasting EDM on the over-saturated market, the exclusivity of this dog show is elicited through flashy dresses and an obligatory establishing shot of the famous Caesar’s Palace Hotel.

In Arnett’s performance, intertextual references to his role as Lego Batman are planted into the script, or possibly through improvisation, by writers Max Botkin and Marc Hyman. Feeling somewhat deployed to wake parents up from their dozy sleep, the incorporation of lines of Aristotle’s philosophy from a Buddhist dog plays out in a similar fashion. One only has to look at the excellence deployed at Pixar to see that films do not have to be a binary – either family friendly or not- to be a success amongst children and adults. The fundamental essence of CGI talking dogs clearly creates a strange onset environment for all human actors involved- demonstrated in some shoddy acting from the whole cast.

Max’s adventures in Las Vegas force him to team up with a little Papillon, who was the former world champion show dog, Philippe. Played by Stanley Tucci with a gusto that stands out in the flat script, it is surely a harbinger for light in the dark caverns of witnessing dogs with talking mouths.

Formulaically unfolding, it became apparent when watching the final act that Raja Gosnell’s style feels outdated firstly in its heteronormative conclusion and lack of true engagement with a subject matter – clearly not void of ‘kids’ films as My Life is a Courgette (Claude Barras, 2017) or Song of Sea (Tomm Moore, 2015). You clearly cannot teach an old dogs new tricks…

Show Dogs is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 25th.

Downsizing

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This being a Hollywood movie, you may find yourself worrying you’re at the right film when it starts off with a Norwegian scientist in a lab. No matter: it soon goes through momentous discovery to big international conference where one Norwegian scientist takes to the stage and opens up a box to reveal another of his colleagues – who has been ‘downsized’ and is now a mere five inches tall. It’s the solution to too many people living on planet Earth with its finite and inadequate resources.

Cut to people watching this on TV in public spaces, among them occupational therapist Paul Safranek (that American everyman Matt Damon). He and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) are currently experiencing budgetary problems and over the next few weeks and months they discover couples that they know who have ‘downsized’ and think it’s the best decision they ever made.

So the couple take a visit to Leisureland, a miniature resort where ‘downsized’ people live after the non-reversible procedure. They learn that if a full-sized person becomes downsized, the financial assets of an average income would turn from just about enough to get by to a millionaire’s income. They’re hooked, the paperwork is signed, the process undergone.

On the other side of the process, it all seems too good to be true, although Paul isn’t really sure if he fits. He is even less sure he likes his constantly partying, Serbian upstairs neighbour Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz) and his business partner Konrad (Udo Kier). And as Paul watches the TV news he learns there are global issues with the process too: people in repressive regimes are being downsized against their will, such as Vietnamese activist Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau). Who one day turns up as the head cleaning lady in charge of a small posse of cleaning ladies tidying up Dusan’s flat after one of his parties.

If this seemed initially like a utopian existence, Leisureland turns out to suffer from all the financial inequalities that beset other human societies: there are haves and have-nots. Tran takes Paul to her home in the hope that he can administer medicine to her seriously ill flat-mate – on a bus through a vast tunnel to outside the Leisureland complex where the poor live in substandard, run down blocks of flats. The narrative has stranger things to deliver still, as Dusan takes Konrad and the other two to visit the original downsized Norwegian colony…

Sadly, however, while downsizing is a visionary film brimming with radical concepts it’s equally an infuriating narrative exercise where potentially rich ideas, themes or characters suddenly appear only to disappear shortly afterwards before they can be fully explored. So for instance, the ill neighbour for whom Paul supplies inappropriate tablets which Tran gets her to ingest one week is gone when he visits the next week. What happened? “Oh, she died”, says Tran matter-of-factly. No shock, no grief, patently unbelievable. Something similar happens towards the end of the film when Paul, in an episode with the Norwegian scientists’ colony worthy of When Worlds Collide (Rudolph Maté, 1951), has to decide whether or not to accompany the departing colony members into a huge Brave New World deep underground.

Were it not for such serial errors of judgement, this could easily been the film of the year. It’s still worth seeing, though, despite its faults.

Downsizing is out in the UK on Wednesday, January 24th. Watch the film trailer below: