A Dog’s Way Home

1. Movies At Home : 
2. A Dog’s Way Home

The Reel Review

D+

The latest, presumably family-friendly movie from writer W. Bruce Cameron (A Dog’s Purpose) is the fictional tale of Bella, a dog who embarks on a preposterous 400 mile, two and a half year journey home after being separated from her family (Jonah Hauer-King and Ashley Judd) back in Denver. Bryce Dallas Howard is the voice of Bella.

Cameron’s 2017 adaptation of A Dog’s Purpose was cloyingly sweet but had an odd, disturbing undercurrent, with the main character repeatedly dying (via euthanasia, shooting, etc.) and reincarnated as other dogs. While this film does have a few nice touches – therapy dogs for veterans, the unfairness of pit bull bans and a blasé depiction of same sex relationships – this much darker film looks more like a disturbing, surreal hybrid of A Dog’s Purpose and Saw. Forget the misleadingly cute and cuddly trailer, in this listless story, poor lovable Bella endures acts that will make horrified children burst into tears. She nearly starves to death in the wilderness while being chained to a dying homeless man (James Edward Olmos), is brutally attacked by a pack of wolves, and gets hit by a car while crossing an interstate highway. Sound fun? If that isn’t bad enough, there is the distractingly fake looking CGI of a cougar that (seriously?!) befriends Bella. If you want to mess with your children’s psyches (or your own), by all means, take them to see this bizarre, torturously bad film. If you want to see a humane dog movie, check out classics like Marley & Me, My Dog Skip or Old Yeller.

REEL FACTS

• Shelby, the dog who plays Bella in A Dog’s Way Home, is a rags-to-riches rescue dog who was found malnourished and living in a garbage dump in Tennessee. She is currently a therapy dog working with children with autism.

• Despite its title, A Dog’s Way Home is not a sequel to 2017’s A Dog’s Purpose. The sequel to that film, A Dog’s Journey, is scheduled for released later in 2019.

• Director Ron Howard, father of Bryce Dallas Howard, who provides the voice of Bella, has a cameo as one of the drivers on the highway towards the end of the film. Howard co-starred with director Charles Martin Smith in the 1973 classic American Graffiti.