The Call of the Wild

Based on the book by Jack London, The Call of the Wild follows a 19th century dog as he unwittingly embarks on a series of adventures through the Yukon Gold Rush. There’s never a point at which The Call of the Wild doesn’t come off as a somewhat misguided endeavor, with the decision to employ computer-generated effects to portray the furry protagonist certainly standing tall atop the picture’s list of faults – as the dog, named Buck, generally comes off as a cute yet unnervingly anthropomorphized cartoon character (ie he’s just distracting, for the most part). Beyond that, however, the picture tends to come off as a fairly tepid geared-towards-small-children adventure that suffers from a mostly hands-off vibe (and it doesn’t help, certainly, that the movie is rife with unpleasant animals-in-peril interludes). It’s equally clear, however, that filmmaker Chris Sanders has managed to infuse the proceedings with a small handful of genuinely exciting sequences (eg Buck saves a character from drowning), and there’s little doubt, as well, that the movie seriously benefits from a typically charismatic and winning turn by Harrison Ford (cast as one of Buck’s masters). The end result is an almost-watchable endeavor that never quite manages to achieve liftoff, which is too bad, ultimately, given the disappointing paucity of old-school adventure flicks within contemporary multiplexes.

** out of ****

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