Lane Minor

2.5/5 Typical dog film. The camerawork, while clean, was never visually interesting. The dog point-of-view shots were interesting but overused. The only consistently good dialogue came from the narration and the hilarity of the dog's interpretation of the world. Dialogue delivery was also consistently poor, the human characters sound like characters, not real people. Child acting was standard, not exceptional. Adult actors (excepting Kathy Baker, Amanda Seyfriend, and Martin Donovan) were not emotive in multiple scenes. Many characters were one-dimensional (especially Maxwell), to the point of "this character has 'x' relationship with this character, and no development beyond." The story was the worst part of the film. Every cliche event in a romantic drama occurs. No characters grew except for Eve and Enzo. The opening shot is repeated at the end of the film in exactly the same way. Time also passed too quickly, it felt more like a barrage of events than a coherent lifetime, although this could be because the characters (apart from Zoe) do not physically change enough. Multiple story beats happen where it would be idiotic to have the dog present in real life. Very good-feely, but nothing here is compelling, visually interesting, or unique apart from the zebra hallucination and the Mongolia tie-ins. A fine way to pass the time if you're a dog lover, but movie-lovers should choose something else.