With the year of 2019 still feeling young like a baby pea pod, we always got to have the heartwarming, cute film that has to relate to somewhat of a pet. In 2017, people wanted to see a dog in different characteristics in “A Dog’s Purpose”. Last year, people wanted to see a rabbit voiced by James Corden in “Peter Rabbit”. Turns out that in the lovely year of 2019 where people are still obsessed with Toto’s “Africa” needs just a semi-mediocre execution of something like “Homeward Bound” with “A Dog’s Way Home”.
This tells the story of a cute pit bull named Bella, with an inner human voice by Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, which an animal control takes her entire family away from where she lives, underneath an abandoned house. A cat simply called “Mother Cat” rescues Bella and continue to live there.
Meanwhile, an aspiring doctor from Colorado named Lucas along with his friend Olivia go to visit the kittens underneath the house in hope to save them. Out comes Bella where Lucas starts to develop a friendship at his home for a year. Bella starts to grow a unexpected love for cheese when Lucas attempts to give a “tiny piece” for the dog.
Bella starts to grow a problem where she attempts to get lost and does not know where home is. If that happens one more time, a contractor will send animal control to take away Bella because pit bulls are very illegal in the city of Denver.
Bella chooses to attempt to obsessively chase a squirrel to the point where he is noticed by animal control and then taken away. Lucas meanwhile chooses to move outside city limits to keep Bella following the pit bull rule to send her to live with Olivia’s aunt and uncle in New Mexico.
Bella starts to now miss Lucas with all of her heart when escaping her new ownership in New Mexico. It is now her mission to travel a whimsical 400 miles to get back home to her owner, Lucas.
Before I get into my thoughts, it is very interesting that there is another W. Bruce Cameron (author of “A Dog’s Way Home”) dog book-to-movie adaptation coming out later this year which would be the sequel to “A Dog’s Purpose” with Josh Gad and Dennis Quaid (a film I actually liked), “A Dog’s Journey”. It is very odd that W. Bruce Cameron is getting two movie adaptations this year.
At the first 35-40 minutes, it has promises that it will actually be a predictable, heart-warming dog film that doesn’t feel like a live-action cartoon. However, the last half of the film screams “live-action cartoon” when it comes to the supporting characters like the contractor, the animal control, and every one of the side characters. It can also get a bit too depressing as well.
With that being said, “A Dog’s Way Home” feels like an almost decent piece of dog food, but feels mostly stale and hard-to-chew in its final product, which does not reveal a bad product of dog food. It’s just average.
Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World, 50/50) is really charming and delightful as the voice of the Bella pit bull whenever there is a happy situation or not. So is Jonah Hauer-King as Lucas (although at times during the second and third acts can be a cartoonish-Man with the Yellow Hat from Curious George) and Ashley Judd as her unemployed veteran mother, Terri. Both characters are probably the most believable and serious-taken people in the film.
A big positive aspect in the film would be the relationship between Bella and Lucas. Whenever there was a time when Bella is getting lost, Lucas feels aware of Bella instantly and belts out to her, “Go home!” It feels realistic of how a human reacts to a pet as well as representing the love they have for them.
However, the film can get on a very negative side where someone experiences the raw side of dog food. Director Charles Martin Smith (Air Bud, Dolphin Tale) is known for directing decent animal-fare in his track record.
Smith is very notorious this time around at times when during the second half of the film, it can get too depressing at its own good where Lasse Hallstrom with “A Dog’s Purpose” handled it good enough. Also, when Bella later in the film encounters a cougar friend and wolves, they look so cheap and unbelievably fake like something from an old “WebKinz” CD-Rom disc.
Not just that, probably the worst use of visual effects in this film is during the beginning when Bella grew up underneath the abandoned house, he grows up by less than a second by improving his size like Microsoft Word! I’m not even kidding.
“A Dog’s Way Home” is an average, almost-passable lost dog film that I think kids might enjoy for sure. But be aware, the adults might get their depression haunted afterwards.
Grade: 5/10
