The furry protagonist of the film remembers his past lives. He remembers how he was first born a street dog and how his life ended when it had barely begun. He remembers his second life as a retriever named Bailey, the faithful companion of a country boy named Ethan. He also remembers being reborn as a police dog in Chicago, as a pet corgi in Atlanta, and as a St. Bernard in the outback, where he was not well cared for. But in his fifth life he lived near the farm of the aging Ethan, and one day they managed to meet again.
The release of the film in the United States was accompanied by a scandal, which broke out because of the leaked video from the shooting. This video made many people suspect that the dogs in the film were being mocked. The authors of the tape insist that the press got a tendentiously edited fragment, which does not reflect the essence and context of what is happening
Lasse Hallström, the regular director of ABBA videos, caught Hollywood’s attention when his 1985 family drama My Dog’s Life was nominated for two Oscars, one for writing and one for directing. Hallström has been working in America ever since, specializing in sentimental and romantic films like “Chocolat,” “Casanova” and “Dear John.”
Although Hallström’s first famous film had the word “dog life” in the title, it was actually the story of a young boy growing up and taking the tragedies that fell upon him hard. This “sin” before dog-lovers was corrected only in 2009, when the director shot the drama “Hachiko: The Most Faithful Friend,” which was mostly about a dog.
Now Hallström has released a movie in which humans are even more in the background and where even Dennis Quaid, who played Ethan in his adulthood, can’t outplay the succession of dogs portraying the reborn central character. Dog lovers, take note! Though you may have a hard time watching a picture where the dogs die or die multiple times and where not all the owners turn out to be as caring as Ethan and dark-skinned student Maya, the corgi owner.
“A Dog’s Life” author Bruce Campbell (no relation to his actor namesake) also wrote the book “8 Simple Rules for My Teenage Daughter’s Friend,” which was the basis for the sitcom of the same name starring Kathy Sagal and Kaley Cuoco
Filming of the film adaptation of Bruce Campbell’s bestseller “A Dog’s Life” was organized by Walden Media studio, which specializes in soulful and moralistic cinema and promotes “right” values with a conservative flavor, but without conservative extremism. All of this applies to “A Dog’s Life” to the fullest extent. The film unashamedly celebrates loving parents, friendly families, good people, honest workers, and frowns upon those who ruin their lives with alcohol, envy the success of others, don’t care about those they have tamed, or fall into despondency when life presents sad surprises.
The main character’s rebirths allow him to go through all the post-war times, and in each era there are decent people who lead the “right” life. It is as if the film is saying that music and fashions change, but true values – love, family, kindness – remain the same. Just as a sincere, selfless dog’s loyalty does not change depending on what nickname the main character wears and what breed he belongs to.
Because the film is shot from the dog’s point of view (often emphasized by the choice of camera angles), it often makes the audience laugh with the way the hero’s voice-over describes his owners’ lives. Let’s say he calls kissing “finding food in other people’s mouths,” and about his police training he says he had a distracted owner who was always losing something and demanding to find it.
There are sad scenes in the film, and not just related to the main character, but because of the abundance of dog jokes, romantic moments and demonstrations of good-nature, “A Dog’s Life” looks like a comic melodrama. It cheers more often than it offers tears, and it drives one not to depression but to contrition. Even those who despise Hollywood’s love of dogs and prefer cats will find it hard to resist a “mee-mee” at the sight of the loyal eyes and playful habits of the characters in A Dog’s Life.
Unfortunately, it’s not a very exciting narrative. The main character remarks at the end of the film that the main thing is to live in the here and now, and “A Dog’s Life” is arranged according to this recipe. But this is a bad principle for a motion picture, because a fascinating story requires movement from point A to point B, not just the recounting of a chain of life events. In none of his lives does the protagonist particularly strive for anything, and this gives his story a waltziness that does not befit a Hollywood movie. However, in this case, it’s not a mistake but part of the plot, so there’s nothing to reproach Hallström for. It would have been worse if he had imposed a dynamic plot on a story where there was none to begin with.