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The Call of the Wild
Mar. 9th, 2020 12:06 pmI wasn't intending to go and see The Call of the Wild, but it was highly recommended to me and I had a free afternoon yesterday, so I did.
And I mostly really enjoyed it. As a live action film, with computer-generated animals, it's a weird mix of reality and fantasy. The dogs and wolves were photo-real, but didn't act like real animals would, and the people interacted with them differently because of that. The human characters spoke to Buck, the main dog, as they would to a person, and he responded much more like a person than an animal, but he didn't talk and the humans always thought of him as a dog. So, as I said, a weird tonal mixture.
My other gripe was that Harrison Ford's voiceover made no sense and was entirely unnecessary. As he was a character in the film and would have had no way of knowing about all the stuff Buck did before they met, it was confusing to have his voice explaining the scenes where there was no dialogue. And, besides, the animals were so expressive and the storytelling so clear, there was no need to these scenes to be explained by voiceover anyway.
Still, that aside, the film was great fun and very affecting. I liked the section where Buck was a sled dog for the mail best, and the mailman, Perrault, was by far my favourite character. Omar Sy was fantastic, and I loved his portrayal of his relationship with both the dogs and his fellow human mail carrier.
So, an entertaining trip to the cinema overall.
And I mostly really enjoyed it. As a live action film, with computer-generated animals, it's a weird mix of reality and fantasy. The dogs and wolves were photo-real, but didn't act like real animals would, and the people interacted with them differently because of that. The human characters spoke to Buck, the main dog, as they would to a person, and he responded much more like a person than an animal, but he didn't talk and the humans always thought of him as a dog. So, as I said, a weird tonal mixture.
My other gripe was that Harrison Ford's voiceover made no sense and was entirely unnecessary. As he was a character in the film and would have had no way of knowing about all the stuff Buck did before they met, it was confusing to have his voice explaining the scenes where there was no dialogue. And, besides, the animals were so expressive and the storytelling so clear, there was no need to these scenes to be explained by voiceover anyway.
Still, that aside, the film was great fun and very affecting. I liked the section where Buck was a sled dog for the mail best, and the mailman, Perrault, was by far my favourite character. Omar Sy was fantastic, and I loved his portrayal of his relationship with both the dogs and his fellow human mail carrier.
So, an entertaining trip to the cinema overall.
