April 23, 2018 2 min to read

Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs is a beautiful, funny, and somewhat underwritten film.

by Zach Saul

Isle of Dogs is a visual masterpiece unlike anything Wes Anderson has ever created - and the art direction and craftsmanship that went into this film are breathtaking. In his live-action films, there are moments where Wes Anderson’s “just-so” (a term used by his critics) aesthetic can feel overdone and contrived. However, in stop-motion, the care and thought Anderson put into every detail fits perfectly and is so much fun to watch onscreen.

As a story, there are elements of Isle of Dogs that feel ordinary and conventional - but the beautifully written script, backdrop, and sociopolitical flare more than compensate you in return. In the era of Trump, what’s more fun than a corrupt Japanese mayor butting heads with “the science party”? Anderson uses Japanese culture and spoken Japanese very cleverly in the film - and while some moviegoers will find it pretentious, the foreign language was a brilliant device. I think the Isle of Dogs is trying to draw an experiential parallel between how dogs experience humans and how Americans experience the ramblings of Atari - so that viewers can spend 90 minutes in a noble dog-like mind frame. During these disorienting scenes, Anderson uses narrators, and flashbacks brilliantly to orient the viewer, add context, and provide comic relief. Frances McDormand is outstanding as the interpreter inside Kobayashi’s addresses - and we can only hope she signs on to future Wes Anderson films.

As characters - the Isle of Dogs gang falls short of Anderson’s best movies, but still delivers the charming and clever dialogue fans have come to expect. There’s much more happening in the narrative to occupy your attention, and similar to The Grand Budapest Hotel we can forgive the lack of depth some of the characters possess. The language barrier accounts for part of that disconnect, but another barrier is the mere fact that the main characters are dogs. A mistake too many movies make when portraying dogs is giving them excessively human personalities. While Anderson’s dogs spoke, argued, and howled they possessed uniquely noble affectations - that came across as self-aware instead of contrived.

The Good: Nobody makes movies like this. Ever. The music, ornate sets, revelatory art direction, and slower-paced storytelling is a relic of a different era. Isle of Dogs isn’t going to tell you how to feel when to laugh, or when to cry like most studio movies will. Instead, it will afford you the time to project your experience onto it - and that’s the true genius of movies like Isle of Dogs. Anderson’s movies aren’t for everyone, and won’t ever lead the box office - but as far as I’m concerned he’s a master craftsman and one of the finest 3 living filmmakers.

The Bad: There were a few characters that felt like they needed more screen time. Nutmeg (Scarlet Johansen) and Tracy (Gretta Gerwig) both because they were interesting personalities and I think their insertion would have deepened our understanding of Chief (Bryan Cranston) and Rex (Edward Norton).

** I have an early prediction for the 2019 Oscars: “Isle of Dogs” will be snubbed for Best Animated Feature by “The Incredibles 2” because of inferior box office numbers.