Given the star studded cast, it would seem only a major derailment of writing would be all that could sink this iceberg but in practice- that is only the tip of the, uh, iceberg. To save the ice, Swifty enlists the help of his friends: A polar bear voiced by Alec Baldwin, a neurotic albatross (James Franco), a female fox friend (Heidi Klum), his caribou boss (Anjelica Huston) and so on. The evil walrus, it turns out, commands an army of subservient puffin henchmen and is hatching up a dastardly scheme to melt the ice of the arctic (guess all the hype about climate change in the media never reached his fortress).
To prove he has the chops (we’ll forget that he is a fox and not a husky for now), he commandeers one of the sleds and delivers a mysterious package to what turns out to be a hidden fortress belonging to one Otto Von Walrus (John Cleese). Swifty, an arctic fox (Jeremy Renner), works a lowly position in the mailroom of the Arctic Blast Delivery Service, but yearns to be a Top Dog, the Arctic’s heralded husky couriers. Critics lit it up for being uninspired and immature but we’ll take a look at the material itself after a quick summary of the story. And fail Arctic Dogs did, having returned a mere $9-million at the box office against its $50-million production budget. Blame it on countless mediocre theatrical CG comedies before it if you must (looking at you Alpha & Omega and Rock Dog), or perhaps the simple fact that the medium itself is no longer a guarantee for a wonderful piece of cinema and you have the formula for failure. However, by the time of its 2019 theatrical release, Arctic Dogs (aka Arctic Justice or Polar Squad depending on where you live) opened to much more skeptical movie-goers.
Arctic dogs swifty free#
Pixar and DreamWorks had spoiled audiences with so many consecutive masterpieces that smaller, less inspired films could follow in their footsteps and expect to cash in with audiences by default (think movies like The Nut Job and Free Birds). There was a time a decade ago when use of the CG animated medium coupled to a theatrical release meant automatic success. I’d say it might teach kids that climate change is endangering polar bears, but the walrus’ plan is so nonsensical that it might be a moot point.It’s as if Norm of the North got Another Theatrical ReleaseĪrctic Dogs is that odd film that comes along that doesn’t do anything wrong so much as it fails to do anything memorable. The lame jokes and bad voice acting only make things more grating. It doesn’t try to push new barriers in terms of story and it isn’t really well-made from a technical standpoint. All he did was help the girl once when they were kids.Ī simple story can be charming when the animation is pretty, but here the animation is too ugly for that saving grace. It’s honestly sort of sweet, but what gnawed at me was that Swifty didn’t seem particularly nice to begin with. It’s that tired cliché where the guy acts arrogantly to impress the girl, but in doing so pushes her away because she actually liked him for being nice, and then the guy realizes his mistake and becomes nice again. It’s a cute story on paper, but in practice the execution is not that cute. In the end, he gets a rare opportunity to save the day using his ability to go undetected and then uses his new-found influence to give opportunities to animals of all sizes. His color means he often gets overlooked. His size means he doesn’t get a chance pull a sled like the huskies do. It centers on the Arctic fox being small and white. Arctic Dogs sort of does the same thing, albeit more simply. Zootopia was notable for using the characteristics of the animals as a part of the story. The image above is one of the rare good ones. The angles are wrong and it just doesn’t look good. I understand that not everyone has Disney-level budgets, but while I enjoyed the character design and animation style of something like Rock Dog a few years ago, Arctic Dogs doesn’t make the cut for me. For starters, the animation is a let down. This film could believably take place in the same universe as Zootopia, but it’s not quite the Zootopia spin-off we deserve. This shot looks good, but it isn’t representative of the film.
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