First Impressions: Arctic Dogs (2019)

How many paint-by-numbers animated features have we had this year? We had Wonder Park, UglyDolls, Abominable was a pretty safe movie in formula, Missing Link was close, Addams Family was kind of that. Not that I dislike all of those movies, but once you notice the formula, you start to notice which movies follow it to the letter. Arctic Dogs is a movie that follows it to the letter.

This movie is a really formulaic plot, it contains all the tropes of any other children's animated feature, for a lot of this movie, it was actually reminding me of Shark Tale, though this movie is better with the plot than Shark Tale, which is not saying a lot really. I mean, you have the generic characters, the generic set-ups, the generic "Kiss before they do something dangerous" the whole formula has been done, and unlike with Abominable or Missing Link it didn't have many redeeming qualities to make it worth seeing.

Characters are annoying, you have your typical lead that makes up stories to make himself look better, the big guy with a kind heart, the goofy friend, you even have your own minions expy, because we haven't enough of those. There is no character that I even remotely gravitated towards for anymore reason than that I like foxes, but even then Zootopia, Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood, all movies with fox characters and all better than this.

Animation wise, this movie is unimpressive. There were moments that could have been impressive, but most of the movie is bland to look at and the animation itself is... okay, I guess. Visually speaking this movie is not worth the theatre trip.

You know, when I saw the poster for this movie, I kind of expected it to be a direct-to-video affair, it looks and feels like it. Like, from the poster and title alone, it looks like a movie you would see in the discount bin. The fact that this movie was produced by Assemblage Entertainment does not help matters. The visuals of this movie are not terrible, but not theatre quality in my opinion. I would not be surprised if this was going to be a Direct-to-video feature and then got thrown into the theatres for one reason or another. Though the casting might have been why it was a theatrical release though.

Quite frankly, there is not a lot worth talking about wit this movie. It is bland to look at, formulaic, bland, boring, and humourwise, jokes that would have been worth a slight chuckle at most were the funniest things in the movie. It is not worth getting angry at, not worth seeing and sure as hell not worth the 13.50 I spent for the ticket. If you want to see it, I'd say "Save your money for Frozen II", that one looks promising.

God this was bland....