“ISLE OF DOGS” My rating: B
101 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
So much is going on in Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” that it’s hard to wrap one’s head around it.
Perhaps it’s best to let our eyes do all the work, for this is one astoundingly beautiful animated film.
Shot with the same stop-motion techniques as Anderson’s earlier effort, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” this new entry employs the filmmaker’s usual deadpan humor with gorgeous Japanense-inspired designs and a yarn about human/canine relations.
It’s part sci-fi, part “Old Yeller.”
In an introductory segment designed to look like Japanense screens and woodcuts and propelled by throbbing Japanese drumming, an unseen narrator (Courtney B. Vance) relates how, after an outbreak of “dog flu” and “snout fever,” all canines in the city were banished by the cat-loving Mayor Kobayashi, head of the ruling Kobayashi clan.
The dogs were transported to an island of trash off the coast where they learned to dig through the refuse for sustenance.
But not all humans are anti-dog. A few still long for the days of “man’s best friend”; a pro-pup scientist is even developing a cure for dog flu.
The plot proper (the screenplay is by Anderson, who developed the story with Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Kunichi Nomura) kicks in with the arrival of Atari, the ward of the Mayor who has stolen a plane and crash landed on the Isle of Dogs in search of Spots, his beloved guard dog, who was torn from him by the canine exodus.
The boy immediately teams up with a quartet of puzzled pooches (voiced by Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Bill Murray and Jeff Goldblum) and the suspicious Chief (Bryan Cranston), who understandably nurses a bad case of anti-human sentiment. (more…)
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