By Shane Conto
Over the past few years, there has been a growing trend in a certain group of films filling the theaters. Have you noticed it? Is it the flood of remakes and reboots? Is it the influx of comic book films? This one particular phenomenon is much more subtle. There is a new Peter Pan coming soon, a new David Copperfield, the most recent Little Women adaptation, and a big budgeted King Arthur film (actually a few). When it comes to easy adaptations, Hollywood loves an old property that is within the public domain. That brings us to 20th Century Studio’s The Call of the Wild. When the trailer for this dropped, the most attention that it received was for the heavy use of CGI. Buck, our central canine, is fully CGI along with every other animal in the film. This was a creative choice that got a lot of negative attention. Didn’t they learn a lesson from The Lion King and its strange uncanny valley creatures?
Apparently, they did not.
But when it comes down to it, does that make or break the film? I definitely wouldn’t go that far but it sure is distracting. The CGI can look very believable one moment and terribly unconvincing in another. That is the trickiest aspect of this film to navigate. Christopher Sanders, the director of this film, makes the choice to computer generate the vast majority of the film. The budget is high but the risk of hurting actual animals is low. They are able to have these animals do many things that they probably could not get a real dog to do. Buck turns out to have a lot more heart than you would expect from a CGI dog. Terry Notary portrays this pooch through motion capture work and bring some personality and charm to the performance.
Overall, this film teeters between hits and misses pretty regularly. There are particular scenes that come off pretty cliched and melodramatic but at the same time, there are certain scenes that truly hit the mark emotionally. These emotions are conveyed so well through the earnest and motivated performance of Harrison Ford (one of the biggest selling points of the film). Ford gives one of the best performances he has in years which is the emotional anchor of the film. Omar Sy gives a strong and endearing performance. Elsewhere, Dan Stevens is a cartoon villain that does not feel right in the film and drives the story in the wrong direction. The tone of this film is considerably lighter than that of the book which might turn some fans off. The family-oriented tone makes sense with this being a traditional story. Speaking of the tone, this film feels old school in a great way. The Call of the Wind feels like a film made decades ago (minus the heavy reliance on CGI). John Powell’s score provides that needed boost to this adventurous feel.
This story feels decently close to the actual plot of Jack London’s novel and captures the adventurous spirit of the story as well, yet the script is not always working as well as you would hope. Some scenes feel truly emotional while others feel contrite and cliched. The voiceover is overly telling instead of showing but Ford gives all he can to that aspect of the film as well. When it really come down to it, this film is a mixed bag. But if you want some adventure and some feeling at the end of your day, why not choose The Call of the Wild.