For the first time in his illustrious filmography, Harrison Ford – who has acted alongside real snakes, costumed Wookies and CGI aliens – may be out-acted by the non-human companion at his side in “The Call of the Wild,” the new film from “How To Train Your Dragon” director Chris Sanders that is good-natured and gentle-hearted to a near-fatal degree. Not that the 77-year-old Ford hasn’t more than earned the opportunity to step to the side—his live-action roles outside of “Star War” have been scant as of late, and he seems both well aware and well-off that his natural chummy screen presence is still more than a treat for audiences in 2020. Even if his portrayal of the downtrodden alcoholic John Thornton comes off as Han Solo asleep at the wheel.
It also doesn't matter too much in the family-friendly “Call of the Wild,” whose real star is the larger-than-life Buck—the excitable and daring dog realized via motion-capture by Terry Notary to accomplished, magical ends. If Andy Serkis is the godfather of motion-capture, Notary is one of the filmmaking technique’s rising stars, having recently portrayed cinema’s most iconic gorilla in “Kong: Skull Island” and considerably smaller primates in Matt Reeve’s “Planet of the Apes” films. In “Call of the Wild” – which shows Buck undergoing a journey with multiple human masters before finding his pack – the charms largely come from Notary’s fantastic performance; he gives tangible weight, personality and ease of loyalty to Buck while never trying to make us think he’s creating the illusion of a real dog. Just a believable one, with the slightest of human expressions to clue us in on what the St. Bernard is thinking. The kids will be delighted, the parents may very well be too…or at least thankful that “Call of the Wild” keeps things grounded enough to keep the dogs mute.
The story itself isn’t as delicately handled as the technology that allows Notary to be a canine. Adapting the 1907 novel is “Blade Runner 2049” and “Murder on the Orient Express” scribe Michael Green, and his screenplay tends to over-explain itself into lifelessness as a fairly brisk (if totally Disney-ified) first hour passes the baton to a second half that’s starved for narrative thrust. Once Ford’s John Thornton and Buck are paired up, “The Call of the Wild” is perfectly watchable as an old-fashioned Yukon adventure, but it’s also more concerned with going on philosophical diatribes (delivered via expendable voiceover from Ford) than telling a complete, compelling story with real bite.
So sanitized and devoid of the untamed tension that you’d expect from a movie with this title is Sanders’s film that when a foe meets gruesome demise by being thrown into a fire, I felt a bit of whiplash—nothing up to this point has indicated a movie with such teeth. Dan Stevens, as a fortune-obsessed villain, is never really a serious threat; his purpose is more akin to the requisite eager abuser who Buck must eventually step up to. Omar Sy is the primary human companion for the first half of this story, meanwhile, and he brings sweet infectious joy to a character who is otherwise surface-level, the Alaskan postman who helps Buck to initially hear the call.
Beyond Buck, Sanders’s film is visually a pristine Natural History Museum exhibit brought to life. Other CGI animals convincingly growl, whimper and hop. Avalanches roar, winds howl and sweeping shots of uncharted Alaska are gorgeous to behold. But “Call of the Wild” limits its emotional payout largely to what feels inevitable from the opening scenes—there are no surprises in these uncharted forests, and that’s just how the kid-friendly production would like it. That that unavoidable sense of pre-ordained, danger-free artificiality extends to the movie’s landscapes, which were largely a product of visual artistry and green-screen wand-waving, shows how much stock Sanders puts into things feeling as cartoonish as possible. The wide-open vistas and snowy banks feel familiar for their unfamiliarity.
“Call of the Wild” eventually arrives at the point where it isn’t the CGI Buck that’s the odd thing out in a given frame. It’s the flesh-and-blood Ford. It may please the crowds on a lazy Sunday morning, but the cartoon has drowned out the harrowing realities of its source material, and “Call of the Wild” feels uneasily – and inevitably – like an origin story for a Disney+ series that may as well debut in six months’ time.
"The Call of the Wild" is rated PG for some violence, peril, thematic elements and mild language
Starring: Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Terry Notary, Karen Gillan
Directed by Chris Sanders
2020
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