Isle of Dogs
Directed by Wes Anderson
Voices of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand
Rated PG-13
It’s not a criticism to say that “Isle of Dogs” is exactly what you expect it to be, though of course anyone familiar with the oeuvre of Wes Anderson knows precisely what that means.
The second stop-motion animated film by the master of closely-observed whimsy (the first was “Fantastic Mr. Fox”) has all of the idiosyncratic digressions, symmetrical framing, droll humor, adventurous spirit and other techniques that have been so closely associated with the writer-director that they have inspired a “Saturday Night Live” parody.
You know what you’re getting, even down to the appearance of regulars like Bill Murray and Bob Balaban among the vocal talent. You might hope that someday, somehow, Anderson might do something a little bit different. But you’re still fundamentally happy to have gotten it.
“Isle of Dogs” is set in a future Japan, where an outbreak of “canine flu” combined with general governmental oppression has led to dogs being quarantined on a trash-filled island. It’s about a pack of dogs (voiced by a veritable hipster’s all-star lineup of actors — Balaban, Murray, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum and Bryan Cranston) who help a boy named Atari (Koyu Rankin) on a journey to find his dog Spots, after the young human crash lands a prop plane on the island.
With a drumbeat driving the score and quirks surrounding, well, everything from the story’s linguistic challenges (Anderson offers an elaborate explanation for why the dogs speak English and relies on on-screen translators at certain points) to affectations such as the dogs’ frequent dainty sneezes, the movie is effectively defined by the on-screen ephemera.
It is extraordinary to behold, to be sure, with images of waste and decay that are immense in their grandeur. At times, the movie is deliriously weird — such as when a pack of “cannibal dogs” led by a canine voiced by Harvey Keitel appears — and it’s never less than entertaining on, at the very least, a superficial level.
There’s some trouble below the surface, though. Intended as an homage to the films of Akira Kurosawa and, one supposes, to Japanese cultural archetypes, the movie has been criticized in some quarters for being what one Los Angeles Times film reporter called “willfully tone-deaf,” in a tweet.
It’s certainly rocky terrain, at the very least, but it plays less as an act of disrespect than something of a misguided appropriation. Anderson loves this world, to be sure, and he renders its look with painstaking and commendable care. When it comes to the feel, though, things are a little bit off.
