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Canberra Today 18°/23° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ’A Dog’s Way Home’ ***

 

A PUPPY was born under the wreckage of a demolished house in Denver. The dog catcher took her mother away and the puppy was raised by a cat. This is the first of several dubious biological statements in Charles Martin Smith’s feature movie starring a dog called Bella.

It’s best to accept those statements and go with the flow of a movie that takes the filmgoer in a two-year journey through Colorado as the adult Bella trudges back to the home from which she was removed by an overzealous dog catcher (Edward James Olmos) who insists she is a pit bull found roaming unsupervised. Of all the film’s incredibilities, that’s the most incredible. As an adult, Bella is owned, loved and trained by Lucas (Jonah Hauer-King) and his mother (Ashley Judd) who are missing Bella lots.

En route, Bella is followed by wolves (actually wolf/coyote hybrids), makes best friends with an abandoned cougar cub, is chained to a dead man’s body just far enough away from life-sustaining water (this is the film’s most tense passage). And she learns to live on what humans leave in their rubbish bins.

There’s no great message from this. Since opening in mid-January, it has earned in the US more than twice its estimated production cost. The story has relatively low credibility. It’s a pleasant enough wildlife outdoors fantasy filmed among spectacular Colorado scenery. It won’t do young viewers any real harm, provided that, if children ask, parents are cautious about endorsing its verity.

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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