A Dog's Journey (2019)

A Dog's Journey opens with a dying dog receiving a mission from his owner and proceeds to die four more times, each departure treated with the ritual solemnity of a state funeral. This is a sequel to A Dog's Purpose, adapted from W. Bruce Cameron's novel, and it carries the full weight of that inheritance. Dennis Quaid returns as Ethan, a man whose primary emotional register is gazing at a shepherd mix. The film's cosmology is generous and strange: souls recycle, species change, and the universe arranges itself around a woman named C.J. who cannot stop losing dogs. Josh Gad provides the inner monologue, which is mostly commentary on how much he loves the person currently feeding him. The result is a family film that treats canine bereavement as a renewable resource.

The cultural accounting here is thin but not empty. Henry Lau appears as Trent, the eventual romantic partner, and the film presents an interracial romance without a single line of dialogue about it, which is either a quiet step forward or simply a story that never occurred to anyone to interrogate. Gail Mancuso directs, her feature debut, and her protagonist is a young woman who escapes an abusive, alcoholic mother, pursues music, and overcomes stage fright. That is a real arc. It is not, however, framed as an argument about anything. Race, class, sexuality, and the environment are absent as concerns. The antagonist is a boyfriend who hits people. The system under critique is the one that lets dogs get euthanized.

The moral instruction arrives steadily and without controversy. Be kind to animals. Keep your promises. Forgive your mother when she sobers up. Nobody is being scolded about their politics, only about their treatment of beagles. It is a sermon delivered to an empty pew, and the pew is a dog bed.

Four hundred words of dog theology, and not a single policy proposal. The classification is straightforward: high sentiment, negligible ideology, and a mastiff that misses a girl for the rest of its life. We have filed it accordingly.

{"thematic_tags": ["sequel", "book_adaptation"]}