***** outta *****

5 outta 5

Director Wes Anderson’s stop motion animated film, Isle of Dogs,is a really wonderful movie to watch unfold.  It may be incredibly quirky but it never becomes irritating.  Every shot is gorgeous and crammed with details that can really be appreciated on a big screen.  It breaks a lot of conventions as the movie is truly bilingual with Japanese dialogue and a voice over that moves the story along.  As the film’s title cards wryly explain, Japanese is sometimes translated by various means and all dogs barks have been translated into English. This is a weird movie and also incredibly unique. 

In future Japan, a virulent canine flu that is threatening to affect the human population has caused the tyrannical mayor, Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) to banish all dogs to a trash island far away.  Some of those dogs are Rex (Edward Norton), Duke (Jeff Goldblum), the mascot Boss (Bill Murray), and the loner, wild dog, Chief (Bryan Cranston).   One day a plane crashes and a little pilot, the 12 year old Atari (Koyu Rankin), emerges in search of his missing dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber), and he gets assistance from the ragtag mutts. Meanwhile on the mainland a foreign exchange student, Tracy (Greta Gerwig) is uncovering a vast conspiracy to keep the dogs away. 

The fantastical prologue lays out a history of the conflict between cats and the dogs in an amusing way that provides context as to why Kobayashi is so adamant in his degree.  The structure of the main plot is a riff on the classic hero journey in something like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars where the intrepid hero meets a gaggle of supporting characters as they head towards their final destination.  But the movie throws a few curveballs, like the relationship that emerges between Atari and Chief.   At the start it seems Rex will be the lead but the movie reveals more about Chief who takes centre stage.  Tracy’s sub-plot on the mainland seems just there to provide exposition but as Tracy gets deeper into the political conspiracy, it becomes more pronounced in importance.

The movie is gleefully weird in random cutaways and flashbacks which keep things lively.  Scenes are remarkably constructed visually where even the frame arrangement can be good for a gag. One moment where Atari and Chief end up at an abandoned and rather dangerous looking slide plays out in a single shot where Atari slowly checks his height if he is tall enough for the ride, realizes he isn’t, and then sneaks up the stairs anyway.  The stop motion animated photography can look both amazingly fluid and also amusingly choppy, depending on the context of the scene.  It is intentionally recalling the look of the Rankin/Bass holiday specials like Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer which adds to the fractured fairy-tale feel.

There is a cavalcade of well known actors in the film providing the English bits.   Norton’s Rex is a logical dog who practices canine democracy but when things go wrong he gets frazzled.  Murray as Boss gets in a long winded explanation as to why mascot dogs are so important to teams and pretty much anything Jeff Goldblum’s Duke says is oddly hilarious simply due to the weird way that Goldblum delivers it.  When Spots finally shows up and talks to Atari, Schreiber sounds like a dedicated military man.  F. Murray Abraham has a small role as St. Bernard carrying a bottle of liquor around his neck and since Abraham has such a pristine, proper line delivery it’s like he’s a classy waiter.  As the translator, Francis McDormand rapidly delivers lines as a professional translator but also puts in some feeling when needed. 

While almost all of Rankin and Nomura’s lines are all in Japanese their vocal deliveries sell the emotional context so direct translation is almost not needed.  One of the few English speaking human characters is Gergwig’s Tracy as she has intensity like a noir detective.  The character with the most screen time is probably Cranston’s Chief who isolates himself from others but slowly his relationship with Atari shows off his softer side as Cranston goes from crabby to loving.  The dialogue is fast and befits the movie’s offbeat tone. 

The music by Alexandre Desplat is almost continuous throughout with a driving drum that accentuates the emotion and action.  Like a lot of Wes Anderson movies, this is about a ragtag group of misfits who rise up against the vast conspiracy by those in power and learn more about their selves along the way.  Wes Anderson’s recognizable style of wacky direction, eccentric collection of characters and zippy dialogue, automatically becomes somewhat different and funnier since it’s about talking dogs.   The amount of detail is incredible and using the medium of animation Anderson can make things more abstract and impressionistic depending on the emotion of the scene.  

Isle of Dogs is a great melding of stop motion’s distinct look and Wes Anderson’s distinct directorial voice.   Even though it is very artistically oddball, it also works as a mainstream adventure tale about a boy and his dog.  It’s wacky, heartfelt and unlike anything else out there right now.