Isle of Dogs

Image credit: IMDb

We’ve all heard that binary said before, you’re either a cat or a dog person, and while this really isn’t the case for the majority of the population, it’s still a binary that has some clout; enough for Wes Anderson to make a stop-motion movie about it!

Isle of Dogs tells the story of an outbreak of canine flu that leads to all the dogs of Japan, domestic and stray alike, to be sent to a trash-covered island. Six months after the establishment of Trash Island a young boy, Atari, steals a plane and travels to the island in search of his dog Spots. After crashlanding, he is taken in by a pack that promises to help him find his dog. But the rescue mission for Spots soon becomes a rescue mission for all canine kind, as Atari and his pack of friends uncover a horrible conspiracy that threatens to eradicate all man’s best friend.

 I feel that there must be an inherent risk in being a director with a very distinctive and signature filmic style, the risk being that eventually people will get sick of the flavour of your films and move on (cough, Tim Burton, cough). I missed Isle of Dogs at the cinemas, but was curious to see it, as I love The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but now having satiated that curiosity the thought has crossed my mind that maybe Wes Anderson has peaked.

Isle of Dogs is an ambitious film certainly. The stop-motion animation blended with the bilingual script (a significant portion of it being in Japanese) is already reflecting very niche tastes. Add to that the film’s dystopia/war escape filmic tone and its deliberate lack of vibrancy in colour and lighting and it’s the animated equivalent of a pigeon: one can appreciate the attention to detail, but there are nicer birds to choose from. Coming off the back of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was up for Best Picture a few years ago, this film definitely falls flat.

Image credit: Hollywood Reporter

Anderson’s signature tricks of intense symmetry and deadpan dialogue work extra hard in this film to achieve the comedy and absurdity, however it falls just that little bit short of the mark, making Isle of Dogs a movie that only the truest and most die hard of Anderson fans will love. For the rest of us faux-Anderson moviegoers, this flick proves to be an interesting excursion into underexplored areas of film, but one that doesn’t come back with proof that anything interesting lives beyond the realms of the map. I am glad that I’ve seen it, but I don’t think I’ll be watching it again any time soon.

Director: Wes Anderson, 2018

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldbum, Bill Murray, Kunichi Nomura, Akira Takayama, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono, and Harvey Keitel