The Call of the Wild Film 2020

The Call of the Wild movie 2020 is an American drama and adventure film. This film is about a sled dog struggles for survival in the wilds of the Yukon.

The Call of the Wild Movie Cast

The Call of the Wild Movie Review

The Call of the Wild film was directed by Chris Sanders who previously was a co-director on Lilo and stitch the crews and the first how to train your dragon film.

The stars Harrison Ford and is based on the classic novel. And this film tells the story of Description Buck a dog that finds himself in the middle of the Yukon.

Before eventually tagging along with John Thorton played by Ford, a man running away from a very tragic past. So I’m a sucker for these types of movies.

I absolutely love dogs I am a massive animal lover. Anyone will tell you that I melt and turn into a completely different person around dogs.

They basically bring out my inner joy. I have two of my own. I’ve always loved animals. So a film like this, especially starring Harrison Ford one of my favorite actors, is obviously right up my alley.

But unfortunately, I had a major issue with this movie and one that many have talked about since the debut of the trailer and that is the choice to make basically every animal in the film CGI, including Back.

This is something that in the past has worked. Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book movie 2016, for instance, was very impressive. I had no love for the new line king remake but the animals did look very realistic and the CGI was state of the art.

So it’s not that it can’t work, it’s just that it doesn’t really work for this story. The original book had a lot of darkness in it. It had an edge to it. And this film is absolutely aimed at younger kids and families and so the choice to have the dog be a cartoon throughout the entire movie really took out the sense of danger.

It took out a sense of threat. Now I understand that when you have a dog constantly in a movie. And many animals in a film that is in peril. You obviously cannot harm or put a real animal in that situation. That’s obvious.

I can’t even watch Milo and Otis anymore even though I loved it when I was little, because I recognize that whoever made that movie absolutely positively harms those animals and it really pisses me off.

If only we had a modern example of a film that used real animals in these types of situations. We actually do. It’s called Togo. Togo was released on Disney plus last December.

It stars Willem Dafoe and is based on a true story and it’s excellent. I wanna take a brief Segway in this review to talk about Togo.

Because it’s really good and no one ‘s talking about it and it’s the perfect movie for me to talk about as I discussed my issues with this film The Call of the Wild.

It’s real animals. There are times were CGI’s implemented to keep them safe and there are times where the things that they are trying to avoid like a breaking apart lake that was frozen is CGI or storm that CGI.

But the simple fact of the matter is Willem Dafoe was interacting with a bunch of real sled dogs and they use puppies as well to tell the story of Togo’s life from infancy.

And they get the dogs in Togo to do all kinds of crazy things. Running up the sides of mountains, leaping through windows, walking around on shelves, the types of things that I imagine the people behind the call of the wild couldn’t bother themselves to accomplish.

And so they implemented CGI and because of that their film suffers. I would strongly recommend checking out Togo movie 2019.

I couldn’t recommend it more especially if you’re a dog lover and it’s exactly why I looked down on The Call of the Wild movie. Because I recognize that it can be done. But these filmmakers decided to take the easy route and just CGI the whole time.

It’s not the CGI is necessarily bad it’s just very distracting and here’s the weirdest part, The Call of the Wild film is actually a pretty good movie. Everything is there. The bones are there for a good movie and they just didn’t have the tools or at least the time to make it feels seamless and post.

Because we’ve got a cartoon animal running around this acting way too human. The emotions that are on its face at times just don’t feel like a real animal.

Here’s the good part, Harrison Ford Back saves this movie. He god damn rescues that. He’s not in the first act too much and so we have to deal with a lot of CGI animals for about 30 minutes.

It’s as soon as he shows up and as soon as him and Back go on their journey. The film improves significantly because Harrison Ford’s character is a deeply human character and I felt for him and I understood his plight.

And Ford is so good in this movie even interacting with the CGI dog that he absolutely saves the movie for me. And it sucks because I can tell that Chris Sanders is a good director.

He’s doing a really good job with his shots in the structure and the way it all weaves together it’s fast-paced. If you are not put off by the CGI dog, you’re probably really going to like this movie.

If that’s not something that bothers you in the slightest, I have a feeling that more than likely you’ll enjoy the film. And even from my perspective being distracted by it, I still found a lot to like in this movie namely. Because of the beautiful scenery, the music, and Harrison Ford.

So they’re absolutely things to recommend about this movie but it is going to suffer if you have recently seen Togo. Because I just watched most of the things that happen in this movie done with real animals safely and with a great performance from Willem Dafoe.

And so I couldn’t help but think okay it can be done it’s now proven that it can be done. So what is the excuse for the cartoon dog? I don’t get it.

I’m going to give The Call of the Wild movie 2020 a C-plus. Guys, thank you so much as always for reading my The Call of the Wild movie review. Look forward to more reviews very soon. See you next time.