It is a shame that clay-mation movies are not being created or shown on-screen too often but it's understandable as it takes at least a year to set up sets and set up these clay-created characters. It is an intricate genre in the animation world. Wes Anderson, the director, has been under the radar this decade as he made two great movies of this past decade, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel (the latter being in contention for the best of 2010s), that solidify both whimsical at its best with Moonrise and comedic with the right balance of drama or social commentary surrounding the lavishness of the world with Grand Budapest. So, he returns to the realm of claymation movies after he made the great The Fantastic Mr. Fox, even though I do not consider his latest movie in his top tier of movies, this is a beautifully animated movie that both tugs at your heart strings and shows us the world of what may happen when a certain country goes in turmoil because of a specific component that threatens both a physical and a mental state.
In the future, in the Japanese city of Megasaki, where an outbreak of "snout fever" has infected dogs all over the country. Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) issues a decree that all dogs to a quarantined piece of land called Trash Island, aka the Isle of Dogs. The first dog sent there is Spots (Liev Schreiber), the dog of Kobayashi's nephew, Atari (Koyu Rankin). Professor Watanabe (Akira Ito), the Head of Science, believes he found a cure for this outbreak.
Later, a plane by Atari is flown on the island as an Alpha pack of dogs - Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Duke (Jeff Goldblum), Boss (Bill Murray) and their leader, Chief (Bryan Cranston) - witness him crash. The dogs see Atari's picture of Spots even though they don't know him personally, they know that he was the first dog on Trash Island. After failing to get off the island, the dogs attempt to help Atari find Spots, even though Chief declines initially because he does not trust Atari. The dogs overrule Chief's decision.
Again, even though I love his animation, style, balance of humor and heart, some of the political context in the background of the story, I must say that I don't think that is one of Wes Anderson's great movies. I felt this time the tone and the story felt a bit uneven especially with some of the whimsical which sometimes detracts from the serious issues of the movie. There is a subplot involving a foreign exchange student voiced by Greta Gerwig that comes out of nowhere to prove a conspiracy theory that the government and its mayor is doing some corruption. I thought the execution regarding the activists in saving the dogs was poorly executed but it becomes better as we learn who she is and how she is integral to the main story. It is a bit of that Anderson charm from many of his movies.
Looking at the social commentary and the settings of this movie, many people will have some concern regarding cultural appropriation. People will have questions as to why this outbreak had to take place in Japan. I don't think Anderson meant to not placate with making fun of the culture and there is no proof that the humor is down on the Japanese culture. He is paying tribute to the movies to Akira Kurosawa, the late great Japanese director, with the settings and some of the framing in Wes Anderson's style. However, dogs are focused in Japan in both good and bad ways in reality so it kind of did make sense to set it there as to possibilities of an outbreak could happen. Hopefully not.
The voice performances are great throughout this movie as Cranston, the voice of Chief, provides some gravitas to his character as the Alpha leader but he is not a one-dimensional grump as he has to make choices for the pack and also show some love for a dog named Nutmeg who is voiced by Scarlett Johansson. There is some nuance in both its humor and a bit of suspense as there are sad stakes as Trash Island is going to be poisoned.
Anderson did a great job of setting up the whole personal center of a "boy and his dog" story because that is what the movie naturally is with politics and social commentary in the background. There are at times, though, that I could not connect with some characters as I had comparably to his last two movies and also The Fantastic Mr. Fox. So, it does lack a little emotional connect ability with the characters but that and the poor execution of the conspiracy theory subplot does not detract my experience with a very good movie. Dog-lovers will dig this as I have with Anderson's ambitious attempt of balancing the beautiful, intricate animation with real-life problems with almost a home-run.
***1/2
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