Review:

After seeing my first Wes Anderson film (The Grand Budapest Hotel), I really didn't want to have to suffer through another, but I figured "If nothing else, I know it should be a pretty film". Isle of Dogs is continuously pitched as a comedy, but I'm not sure that's a fair label. Isle of Dogs is a masterfully crafted visual, however the story feels neglected. It has the Wes Anderson quirky thing, but it just doesn't translate into humor. There were a few times where the got a smirk because "I recognize that reference" but nothing was really funny. The story is cute, I guess, but there is a side-plot with an albino ginger foreign exchange student (who is the worst character) that is wholly enjoyable and a total waste of time that could easily be eliminated. The voice acting is mostly good, with Jeff Goldblum being the highlight and Edward Norton being easily the worst (The entire movie, every time his character talked it pulled me out of the movie. The voice just doesn't fit the dog and it doesn't feel real, even in a movie where dogs can use saws and drills). My biggest problem with The Grand Budapest Hotel was that is oozed arrogance, and while Isle of Dogs isn't insufferable as GBH was. there were a few decisions that kind of seem like stuff Anderson would play off as part of his artistic vision. The movie tells us that the dogs' barks are translated into English for us and the Japanese dialog is translated by newscasters or student translators. The issue is that not all of the Japanese dialog gets a translation and there are no subtitles. Most of the movie takes place on Trash Island, where there is no news feed, so when Atari (the Japanese boy who heads to Trash Island to find his dog) is talking, we can only try to get a vague idea of the tone of what he's saying (which is hard because the voice actor is pretty monotone). I can understand if the entire movie was from the dogs' point of view and we couldn't understand any human character, just like the dogs can't, but we constantly switch from the dogs back to the politics in mainland Japan. Without subtitles for the Japanese dialog, it feels like we are missing out on most of the story and it makes it hard to connect to the Japanese characters. I had a few other nit-picky problems with how fast and unnaturally relationships progress and how simplified things are to lessen the burden on the animation yet they add in unnecessary things and tiny details. There is a scene where one character gets a kidney transplant. That character is on the right side of the room, the donor is on the left side, there are computers and monotonic filling in the circle around the top, and the surgeon is in the middle. The entire kidney removal is cut open patient, use rib spreader, grab kidney, pull out kidney, sew up patient and the entire transplant is exactly the same level of simplicity. They took a complicated surgery (or I guess 2 surgeries) and simplified it to cut and paste kidney. The same scene sees the surgeon take kidney and place it in a kidney shaped bowl a nurse is holding. The nurse then walks all the way around the semi circle from the left side of the left table to the right side of the right table. It's stop motion animation, so that sequence had to have taken a bit of work which could have been entirely avoided by having the surgeon just turn around holding the kidney to be facing the person getting the kidney. There are cool little unnecessary details like how the wind moves the hair on the dogs and the animation of the spit from the dogs' sneezes. Those are fine, but animating the nurse walking all the way around the room for no reason is just a poor use of time and effort. Little effort was put into the plot and the massive amount of effort put into the visuals is often allocated wrong. The tiny little minute details are cool and it is fun picking out all the small details they paid attention too, however there are too many things they over simplify or avoid to (I can only assume) make the animation easier. Whenever we get fight scenes, it's just the characters running at each other and then it becomes a dust cloud like what happens when Tom and Jerry get in a scuffle. For an "adult" animation movie, there isn't much that sets it apart from a children's animation movie. The story is less whimsical and fun, but there aren't any adult themes and the violence is minimal at best. With a PG-13 rating, I wish they had given more attention to the action scenes instead of tiny little things most people won't even notice or unnecessary scenes like three fat kids playing drums for no reason in the opening. It's a very interesting idea and I can see the massive amount of effort they put into it, but I just don't like how Wes Anderson writes and directs. The story has potential, but he spent to much time trying to make it quirky instead of interesting. The animation is beautiful, but I wish he focused less on the shine in the dogs' eyes and more on the things he condensed for simplicity's sake. It's the same with the soundtrack. The score is great and really adds to the scenes, but there is a song from The West Cost Pop Art Experimental Band they play twice (I think) that really kills the movie in those parts. It's so nasally, repetitive, and lazy that all the effort they put into building the drama is just exhausted. Isle of Dogs has all the pieces of a five star film, but Wes Anderson cares more about putting his fingerprints all over it to put those pieces together right.