Cast: Jeremy Renner, Alec Baldwin, Heidi Klum, John Cleese

Director: Aaron Woodley

Review:

I don’t know what type of financial trouble Jeremy Renner is in, but he has to be in a really bad spot if his Avengers money isn’t enough to satisfy his needs.  Seriously, what was he thinking being apart of this movie?  When he saw this script come across his desk, did he just jump at the opportunity to be involved in a movie from the studio that brought us Norm of the North?  Poorly animated, dull, and a story that we’ve seen in almost every other children’s movie before, Arctic Dogs exists exclusively to take money out of the pockets of parents looking to entertain their kids for 93 minutes.

The film follows Swifty (voiced by Renner), a small arctic fox whose goal is to one day be one of the Top Dogs, a group of mail couriers who deliver goods to various towns across the arctic.  When one of his journeys uncovers the lab of Otto Van Walrus (voiced by Cleese), and his plan to destroy the arctic and take over the world, Swifty must team up with his friends and figure out a way to truly be a top dog and save the world.  As you can probably tell, this is going to be a typical, nonsense plot that very few people will care about.  I’m not expecting a movie like this to have any sort of complex or unique story, but you have to do something to captivate audiences and make them feel like you aren’t completely wasting their time.  Just give us something to attach to so we don’t have to beg for something to actually happen.  One little plot twist or character we can remember would take this movie a long way but instead we get nothing and the atmosphere of the movie just ends up being a boring mess.  Outside of the story though, the animation is absolutely pitiful when compared to what’s being released by other major studios.  I know computer animation has become the standard and something that we should expect from every studio moving forward, but some effort into it when you do it.  It looks clunky, unfinished, and like it should be straight in the DVD bin at Wal-Mart.  It absolutely baffles me that this movie had a budget of $50 million, because I have no idea where it was spent. Dreamworks spent $75 million on Abominable and you can see where that money went, but in Arctic Dogs the film looks so bad you’d figure it would have about half the budget it ended up with.  I know smaller studios are trying to make an impact in the landscape currently dominated by both Disney and Dreamworks, but those studios have been built on decades of quality before they monopolized the industry.  $50 million might get you some nice celebrity voice acting credits, but it absolutely won’t create any sort of quality that will attract audience members.  Anyone who does have the misfortune of watching Arctic Dogs will recognize almost immediately why it was one of the biggest box office bombs of the year.

Overall, not even little kids will enjoy watching a bunch of clunky, unoriginal animals flop around the arctic, so don’t waste your time trudging through Arctic Dogs, so it makes no sense why anyone would try to make it through this movie.  There are so many other things you can do with your time in lieu of watching this movie, and everything down to plucking your nose hairs will be more entertaining.  I’m so disappointed in Renner for taking the easy money and going back to his lavish life, but he will forever be attached as the leading member of Arctic Dogs.

Overall Score: 2/10