Sappy and sickly, it’s a real dog’s dinner
A Dog’s Purpose (PG) Verdict: Howlingly awful
WHEN a director called Lasse makes a film about dogs, it seems reasonable to wonder whether you’re on the end of some sort of practical joke. Unfortunately, A Dog’s Purpose, Lasse hallstrom’s sickly- sweet adaptation of a bestselling 2010 book, is meant to be taken seriously.
Older readers will remember those Sunday-afternoon Disney TV films in which a folksy voiceover accompanied a dog, invariably a doughty mongrel called Rusty, on an epic journey over mountains and through forests. Compared with this, those movies were tarantinoesque in their sickening brutality.
the lead hound is Bailey, a red retriever much loved by his young owner Ethan ( Bryce Gheisar). Ethan is eight and it is 1962, which we know because his father (though not his mother, who has the housework to worry about) frets over the Cuban Missile Crisis.
By the time he is a teenager, his dad has turned into a drunk and Ethan has a pretty girlfriend, hannah (Britt Robertson), who loves Bailey as much as he does. Ethan wins a college football scholarship, but then he damages his leg in a house fire (naturally, Bailey catches the arsonist), and his life implodes.
No more football, no more hannah, and soon enough, no more Bailey. Except, and here is the film’s USP, otherwise known as its unique spewing point, Bailey has not died.
Or at least, he has been reborn as a female German Shepherd who works as a Chicago police dog, called Ellie.
Sadly, Ellie cops a bullet in the line of duty, though not before rescuing a drowning girl and nailing a kidnapper, in the same heroic five minutes.
Next, Ellie is reborn as a corgi called tino, who, after also heading for the celestial kennel, comes back to life as Buddy, a St Bernard crossed with an Australian Shepherd who is abandoned by his heartless owners.
happily, however, Buddy remembers his long- ago incarnation as Bailey well enough to find his way back to Ethan (who has now turned into a somewhat battered-looking Dennis Quaid) and broker a reunion with the ageing but still- fragrant hannah (Peggy Lipton).
I suppose there are children, and maybe even some adults, who will love all this. there’s even a folksy voiceover and some corny moments of slapstick, as in those Disney films of yore.
But for me, sitting through the film’s 100 minutes felt — and I write as a committed dog-lover, with a golden retriever and a schnoodle to call my own — like being drowned slowly in beef- and- rabbit gravy, with added omega 6 to promote shiny, silky fur.