Movie Thoughts: Call of the Wild: Howl, Buck (1981)

• Released: January 3rd, 1981
• Directed by: Kôzô Morishita
• Running time: 1h 6min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A dog is taken north where he has to work as a sled dog, which causes his old wild instincts to awaken.

My Thoughts

This one has been on my watch list for a while now. Finally getting to it. And...it's not bad, but it left some things to do be desired.

I will give it credit: This definitely is one of the most book-accurate adaptations of the story I've seen so far. It definitely takes liberties here or there, but overall this is pretty darn close to the source material. 

But as a movie, I don't know. I do think it's okay. The animation is pretty decent, the audio editing okay, the voice acting fine, but something about it just doesn't really work for me.

I think my main gripe is that this movie just doesn't hit you in the emotions like the story is supposed to. Sad stuff definitely happens on screen, such as animal abuse or animal death, or death of a dog's beloved owner, but I didn't really feel super connected to the characters, therefore I didn't feel as emotionally invested in their journey. Buck's story is a sad one with a bittersweet ending, but none of the emotions really landed for me because I didn't particularly connect with this movie's version of Buck or the characters around him. And I think that this is my main issue with the film. If the emotional connection to the characters isn't there, it's hard for me to really care about your story.

I do overall think that this is a good movie and that it's a solid adaptation, but I really think it needed to do something different with the characters in order to connect us more to them.