The Call of the Wild (2020) Review

"You've been sleeping for two days.  In my bed."

-John Thornton

Buck (Terry Notary) is a spoiled and pampered dog living in California.  He is kidnapped and sold as a sled dog and shipped up to the Yukon.  Buck serves several masters in the dangerous and frozen land and quickly learns how to survive.  He becomes an excellent sled dog, but can't shake the primal urge to venture into the wild.

There will be spoilers ahead.  I liked this movie, but it has some issues in terms of CGI and as an adaption of the book.  It's worth watching on a five dollar movie night.

What Works:

Harrison Ford is probably the best part of The Call of the Wild.  He adds a lot of emotional depth to the character of Thornton and he's a much more interesting character than in the book.  He gets a lot more to do than in the book as well and this extra development makes his role in the story more engaging.

In the book, the final antagonist is a fictional tribe of indigenous people, but they change that here to Dan Stevens' character, Hal.   I think this was a really smart move as Hal is a pretty despicable character in the book, but dies too early to be the final villain.  I'm a fan of this departure from the source material.  They give Hal better motivation for his villainous actions than the Yeehat tribe had.  While Hal is a bit of a cartoony, mustache twirling villain, it's an improvement over the book.

The action sequences are all pretty intense and exciting.  The avalanche and Buck's fight with Spitz are both a lot fun even if they CGI is...interesting.

Finally, this movie is about the spirit of adventure and that really comes across.  It feels like you're going on this insane adventure with Buck and it's a lot of fun.  It helps that I'm a big fan of the book, but even so, this movie takes you on a journey worth taking.

What Sucks:

I have to get the CGI out of the way.  It just looks...wrong.  I can't really describe it, but it's off-putting, especially Buck.  Maybe this movie would have been better if it was fully animated.  I don't know, but there's a better version of it than this.

The movie also softens the story quite a bit.  In the book, a lot more characters die, including pretty much every dog we meet besides Buck.  He even kills Spitz in the book, but here Spitz just wanders off into the wild.  Losing these elements does a disservice to the story.  The Yukon is brutal and not everyone can survive it.  These moments are crucial for Buck as a character and not having them weaken his character development.

Finally, it feels like Hal's story is missing a scene.  He, Mercedes (Karen Gillan), Charles (Colin Woodell) and the dogs go off onto the frozen river.  Later, Hal comes back alone saying the dogs ran off.  In the book, they all fell into the river and died, but we never find out what happened to anyone besides Hal.  There has to have been a cut scene here.  That's the only thing that makes sense.  It's a  shame.  If we had seen Mercedes and Charles die, it would have made Hal's character arc much more interesting.

Verdict:

The Call of the Wild is a fun movie with a solid performance from Harrison Ford and some thrilling sequences.  It changes some aspects of the book for the better and some for the worse and the CGI just isn't right, but I think this movie has got it going on.

 7/10: Good