The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It seems a dog’s purpose is to speak on film
In a recent T-Mobile ad, a dog is trying to watch a slow-motion video on its cellphone of a soaking wet dog shaking itself. Apparently, the phoneowning dog has exceeded its monthly data limit, preventing the full video from playing. This causes understandable outrage, and a breaking of the fourth wall: The dog turns to us to complain — but, wait! That dog is actually speaking to another dog watching videos on a cellphone and commiserating about the limits of inferior telecommunication plans.
An onscreen talking dog is not new — remember the Taco Bell Chihuahua? But I recently discovered an alarmingly expansive history of talking dogs as cinematic stars. Purely by accident, I stumbled across “Bark Ranger,” a seemingly straight-to-streaming 2015 film featuring Jon Lovitz as the voice of the title dog. On paper, this seemed like inadvertent comedy gold. The standard plot — young boy and heroic, smarmy dog confront bad guys — was perfect fodder for children.
And most of those recommendations are deceptive — as in “Bark Ranger,” there’s way too much plot and not enough talking dogs. The genre’s best offerings are limited, but robust, depending on your standards.
The “Air Bud” empire spans 14 films (beginning in 1997). The first five are concerned with a golden retriever’s foray into professional athletics, not conversational English, but the sequels see the dog’s offspring using their words to eventually explore space. And nothing says “we can squeeze seven films out of this premise” like puppies wearing gold chains, calling one another “dawg” and saying “for shizzle.”
The “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” franchise may have fully legitimized the practice by using Hollywood actors like Drew Barrymore, Edward James Olmos and Andy Garcia as canine voices in the first film, from 2008. The sequel, with less star power, touches on standard human concerns of middle age, like marriage, family and mortgages. By the third one, the premise may have exhausted the studio’s budget and the intended audience’s patience. (The original still has the luster of a cult classic, evidenced by a passionate IMDB thread about the film’s appeal to childless adults.)
The new film “A Dog’s Purpose,” based on the 2010 novel by W. Bruce Cameron (and directed by Lasse Hallstrom of “My Life as a Dog” and “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale”), has a dog asking us the big existential question: “What is the meaning of life?” The plot follows the spirit of a dog that passes into a new dog each time it dies, helping lonely humans find meaning. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has called for a boycott of the film after footage was released showing one of the dogs seemingly forced into rushing water.) And the film has stars — Dennis Quaid, Peggy Lipton and John Ortiz play humans whose lives are changed by canine reincarnation, while Josh Gad provides the dog voice.
But unlike the instant gratification of “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” or “Air Buddies,” in which dogs talk among themselves and with other animals, the canine narrators in “A Dog’s Purpose” and “Bark Ranger” mostly address the viewer; human characters can’t hear them.
This seems like an oversight. Is there an unwritten industry rule that says different species cannot communicate onscreen? What would be the harm in allowing a Republican corgi to argue about entitlements or climate change with its Democratic owner? After all, dogs are a global occurrence. In 2014, San Francisco made a dog its mayor for a day — that seems like a concept really worth a 90-minute narrative.
Perhaps our huntergatherer ancestors, without yet having developed the concept of irony, wondered what was on their dogs’ minds. Could these beasts understand the primitive conversations around the fire? Why was barking their only form of communication?
And dogs need us, and it seems like this keeps playing out in our cultural output as an imagined emotional reciprocity. An insistence that they share our values, our sense of humor, our embrace of capitalism. Some ancient cultures deified dogs. Some contemporary cultures eat them. We make them talk.