Canine weepie that’s a bit of a dog’s dinner
A Dog’s Purpose PG Cert, 100 min
Dir: Lasse Hallström;
Starring: Josh Gad (voice), Dennis Quaid, Peggy Lipton, K J Apa, Britt Robertson, John Ortiz, Juliet Rylance, Luke Kirby
There’s a wonderful, too-little-known comedy called Dean Spanley – Sam Neill is an Edwardian cleric who may or may not be the reincarnation of a spaniel called Wag – in which a theory is floated that the world can contain only seven Great Dogs at any time. To that hallucinogenically lovely thought, allow me to add a more prosaic one: there are only really two dog films. One that ends happily, with our protagonist scampering through a loving new home, and the other ends in a veterinary practice with a soft, damp underscore of audience sniffling.
A Dog’s Purpose is the second type three times over, plus one of the first for good luck. Directed by Lasse Hallström, the film follows the life, or rather lives, of a dog who is reincarnated four times across 50 or so years – usually into circumstances that are uncannily reminiscent of a very popular Type Two dog film.
These are: Old Yeller (boy comes of age with faithful hound by his side), Turner & Hooch (service animal saves the day) and Marley & Me (puckish pooch watches family grow around him) – before a variation on that classic Type One, The Incredible Journey, brings things full circle. This segment’s lead human is Dennis Quaid, whose pupils look as if they’ve been digitally enlarged for maximum wistfulness.
A dog has to die every half hour or so for this circle-oflife premise to sustain itself across 100 minutes. A dog’s purpose – at least as far as A Dog’s Purpose is concerned – is to win your heart, then expire in picturesquely tragic circumstances. But the emotions it trafficks are as slack, blunt and finally monotonous as potent.
This is down in no small part to the script, adapted from a 2010 novel by W Bruce Anderson, which largely consists of the dogs’ inner monologues, and is limitlessly inane.
The big joke, repeated with minor adjustments, is that the dog confuses human and canine behaviour.