Movie Thoughts: Arctic Dogs (2019)

• Released: 1 November 2019
• Directed by: Aaron Woodley
• Running time: 1 h 32 min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A family must learn to connect with one another after they end up being the only free people left during a robot takeover. 

My Thoughts

Ah, Arctic Dogs. You’re famous for being a huge flop, one of the biggest ones in cinema history before Playmobil: The Movie came along. I remember first seeing your teaser art. You’re very obviously by the same company that’s behind Norm of the North. In more ways than one. Ah well, let’s get this shit over with, shall we?

The plot’s all very basic. You have your generic underdog story, and nothing new is really added to it. The villain’s main plan is boring as hell and of course has to include some form of global warming/climate change shit, as is tradition in the precious Norm movies that were also done by Assemblage. The plot is just too basic with nothing new really added. Sure, the bit about overcoming prejudices and allowing everyone a chance to prove themselves is a good message, but when nothing new or even remotely interesting is done with it, it just kinda loses its meaning.

The characters? Very one note. Swifty is your generic bland main character. He does at least have some flaws, with him becoming too cocky once he succeeds, but again, nothing about him stands out. Jade is just “love interest”. Nothing to her outside of being the generic female character the main lead will eventually of course hook up with. Swifty’s friends at the mail company are all bland and boring as hell. The villain is very uninteresting and his plan sucks. He literally is like “oh I’ll cause global warming, that’ll make me ruler of the world”. Yeah, that somehow makes sense, right? He also literally doesn’t stand out because every single walrus in this movie uses the same model as him.

The animation and textures are all-right. Just, not cinema-worthy. At all. For a direct-to-DVD thing, this would be acceptable. But it just has this roughness that makes it look just-not-quite finished. It lacks the extra polish that other movies do have. It’s not horrible or anything, but it just does not belong on the big screen if you ask me. That said, this movie in general doesn’t.

The character designs are okay. They just look like they would maybe work better in 2D? Like the way the fox heads are shaped in three dimensions looks slightly off, with their cheeks and stuff. Also, just saying this here, Jade looks way too much like a knockoff Littlest Pet Shop toy. Swifty himself looks the best out of all of these designs, but, again, he just lacks this extra polish, much like the extra characters. Magda the caribou has a really freaky design. Something about her mouth and nose just looks wrong. Also, for a caribou (or, shouldn’t she technically be a reindeer, since she’s Russian?), her antlers are way too much like that of a moose, just angled. The polar bear character PB looks like he could directly come out of a Norm of the North movie, which is definitely not a plus. If you want to make two different movies for different series, it helps to not make them look identical to the point they could take place in the same universe, unless you really wanted to connect things (which they didn’t, this universe is very clearly different from Norm’s).

The voice acting was just very standard and basic. None of it stood out, but I don’t think anything was bad, either.

The music was very bland, which is definitely a minus.

The background elements and environments? The very same. Taigasville is just your generic village, the icy plains all look the same, and even the walrus’ evil lair looks like every other evil lair of an over-the-top cartoon villain out there. It really feels like no effort or thought went into it. The color palette is very bland, too.

Then there’s finally the humor, which is just juvenile and plain not funny. Expect some poop jokes. Uggghh.

I expected Arctic Dogs to be horrible going in. Was it that? No, it’s one of these movies that is really not worth getting angry over. It’s just a whole lot of nothing. A standard cartoon to shut up your kid for an hour. It’s nothing more and nothing less. Everything is bland and basic, but not even offensively so.

This just never should’ve been released in theaters. It would’ve been just okay as a mediocre direct-to-DVD film. It doesn’t look like it belongs in cinema, and that’s because it doesn’t.