Alpha and Omega (2010)

Alpha and Omega arrives in the great tradition of animated road pictures in which two mismatched animals bicker across a continent and discover, somewhere around the third act, that they were made for each other. This one pairs Kate, an Alpha wolf with a promising future in the hunt, with Humphrey, an Omega whose chief qualifications are enthusiasm and a willingness to be tranquilized. Pack law forbids their union. The packs, being wolves, require a merger to survive the winter. There is an arranged marriage, a golfing goose, a duck with a caddie's instincts, and a stampede. The machinery is familiar and it runs on schedule.

Where the film gestures toward social consciousness, it does so politely and then retreats. Kate refuses the match her father arranged, which grants her a measure of self-determination, though the story cannot imagine her wanting anything beyond the right boy. The Alpha and Omega divide is a caste system, and the wolves dismantle it in the final reel. We are meant to understand that love outranks tradition. The lesson arrives through plot instead of sermon, which is to its credit. Nobody turns to the camera to explain the moral. The caribou do the arguing.

The voice cast is a standard Hollywood roster, the romance is strictly boy-meets-girl, and the environmental angle amounts to park rangers with tranquilizer darts. What remains is a modest, harmless confection with eight direct-to-video sequels trailing behind it like ducklings. The animation has not aged gracefully. Neither, frankly, has the howling.