By Jake Coyle

Does the dog movie have any new tricks? Do we want it to? For the most part, we want our dog movies like our pooches: comforting, obedient and slightly slobbery. “The Call of the Wild”, the latest adaptation of Jack London’s 1903 novel, is all those things but adds a new twist. Its canine is computer generated.

Whether that’s an improvement or not depends on how you prefer your animals, digital or more down-toearth. Previous adaptations of “The Call of the Wild”, going all the way back to 1923, were usually done with real dogs, including the 1935 version with Clark Gable and a 1972 film with Charlton Heston.

But movies, like sled dogs, run in packs. This “Call of the Wild”, which co-stars Harrison Ford, follows a string of movies that have tried, and mostly failed, to herd the animal kingdom into the realm of CGI, including “The Lion King” and “Dolittle”. And yet they’ve still been upstaged by the genuine article. If we’re giving out best in show, the paws-down choice of late has been Brad Pitt’s pit bull in “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood”.

It’s not that Buck, the St. Bernard-Collie mix of “The Call of the Wild”, isn’t a good boy. He’s a towering, fluffy guy who will almost, but not quite, fool you into thinking he’s real. He was created partially through a motion capture performance by Terry Notary, who was memorably ape-like in the dinner scene of Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”. The more compelling, albeit unsettling version of “The Call of the Wild” may be seeing it with Notary’s Buck, sans digital effects.

The movie, directed by Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon”, “Lilo & Stitch”) and penned by Michael Green, takes the basic shape of London’s adventure while boosting the adrenaline whenever possible. There are added scenes like an underwater rescue and an avalanche.

But it similarly sketches the Pacific Northwest odyssey of Buck, whose sunny days in California end when he’s kidnapped and shipped north to fetch a price from the teaming miners of the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon. Buck falls in first with a cheerful mailman named Perrault (Omar Sy), who teaches him to be a sled dog. There are worse owners, too, including a posh, abusive fortune-seeker (Dan Stevens). But Buck also repeatedly encounters a bearded woodsman named John Thornton (Ford) who’s both our narrator and Buck’s eventual master. So smart a dog is he that he even noses away the bottles of the heavy-drinking Thornton, like some animal dreamed up by AA and the ASPCA.

Buck’s destiny remains easy to root for. And Ford, looking happier to be on screen than he has in some time, adds considerably to the movie’s charm. The whole thing, with Steven Spielberg’s regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski handling photography, has a warm polish. But it’s also thoroughly ironic to make a movie about the gravitational pull of the wilderness with so much help from computers. There is little here, amid the high-tech photo-realistic animations, that would satisfy London’s concept of “wild”.

“The Call of the Wild” is the first film released under the newly renamed Twentieth Century Pictures, the studio formerly Twentieth Century Fox and since acquired by the Walt Disney Co. It’s a name and logo that can look a little neutered, even if “The Call of the Wild” may seem like it had Disney DNA from the start. But Disney has its own formidable new sled dog movie, too, in “Togo” (starring a real dog), which recently debuted on its streaming service. All of which is to say that today’s movie landscape is, as ever, a dog eat dog world.

“The Call of the Wild”, a Twentieth Century Pictures release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for some violence, peril, thematic elements and mild language. Running time: 100 minutes. Two stars out of four.

NEW YORK:

Destiny

Also:

Viacom CBS is planning a new streaming service that will combine the existing CBS All Access service with Paramount movies and shows from

Viacom channels such as MTV and BET.

The move had been expected since CBS and Viacom combined in August to better compete in the increasingly competitive streaming environment.

CBS was one of the first media companies to launch its own streaming service. Its $6-a-month service CBS All Access includes original programming such as new “Star Trek” series and a revival of “The Twilight Zone”. The service also has old and current broadcast shows.

Since then, Disney launched its $7-a-month Disney Plus service, while Comcast’s NBCUniversal and AT&T’s Warner Media have services coming, tapping movies and shows from their channels and production studios. The companies are all trying to challenge Netflix, Amazon and other established players in the streaming arena as their channels face challenges from people ditching cable TV subscriptions.

In a call Thursday with investors, CEO Bob Bakish said Viacom CBS plans to add “substantial content” to CBS All Access to create a “combined ‘House of Brand’ product.”

That means adding content from Viacom properties Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and Smithsonian and movies from the Paramount library.

ORLANDO, Fla:

Even Cinderella needs an “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”.

Disney officials said Monday that the iconic Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World in Florida would be renovated over the next several months.

The most noticeable changes will be the addition of gold trim to most of the castle and the darkening of the blue hue on the castle’s turrets. The castle is located in the Magic Kingdom park.

Work on the castle will last through the summer. Despite the work, shows at the castle will continue as usual, Jason Kirk, a vice-president of the Magic Kingdom, said in a blog post.

The renovation is coming during the 70th anniversary of the release of the 1950 classic animated film, “Cinderella”. (AP)