Has anyone seen the film yet? I went last night. It’s only playing so far in Phoenix at the “art house” theater, but the theater was fairly full.
I think it’s pretty well made. I can see the criticisms of Tracy as the “white savior” but I’m not sure she really is. I definitely don’t see it as mocking Japanese culture, I see it as a loving homage. But people love to be offended these days, or at least, love to show that they are offended for other people.
As for the animation, it is first rate. The lips match the dialog, and the faces are very expressive. The state of the art in stop motion is very good these days.
The story moves along well. The lack of translation is not a problem, but a Japanese speaker will get a lot more out of this than I did. It’s like Inglourious Basterds in that respect.
One minor spoiler: Like Star Wars, the important people in Megasaki City are related.
Saw it last night and I liked it; dog lovers will especially like it (assuming they like Anderson’s quirky movies). If one is not familiar with Anderson’s movies I could see how they might interpret it as mocking.
I thought the animation was great (but, I’ll admit that I have a weakness for stop-motion and claymation, and am I huge Wallace and Gromit and Tim Burton fan). The story was quirky, but a bit predictable.
Also, the good and bad guys were a bit too one-dimensional.
The voice talent was awesome.
Side note: it couldn’t have been intentional, but I keep thinking about the student leaders of the March for Our Lives movement.
One question about a plot twist:
How did Sport get into Spots cage? (Maybe it was a completely different cage?)
I really enjoyed it - maybe not as much as Fantastic Mr. Fox, but pretty far up there. It was certainly a darker movie.
I can understand the “white savior” complaints about Tracy, and they do have some validity. But I think her character was necessary to maintain “everyone speaks in their own language.” If she didn’t speak English, non-Japanese audiences wouldn’t know what was going on.
I assume the “cannibal” dogs replaced Spots with the skeleton of a deceased dog so Spots could stay hidden.
And a question of my own:
What was going on at the end with a statue commemorating Spots, but then Spots alive underground? Did he have to be hidden for some reason?
I thought the statue was just an homage to Hachiko. Spots and his family only live in the basement because they can. At least, I didn’t catch anything that made me think different.
There is a good story hidden in it somewhere. It was a bunch of ideas that were half thought out.
[spoiler] I assumed it was a different cage for the Sport/Spots mistake. The dogs knew that a dog named Spo-something died in the cage.
I honestly cared nothing about the weird conspiracy Megasaki plot. Every time we left the island the movie lost me. Just stay with the alpha pack and Atari. I didn’t need Tracy (didn’t need her to be an American either), I didn’t need the Kobayashi plot, none of it.
Also, Atari is 12… wasn’t Tracy an older teenager? Their romantic connection was weeeeird.
[/spoiler]
I liked it a lot but also felt that the Tracy character was unnecessary. She felt tacked onto the story for unknown reasons and didn’t really add anything. Or rather, it felt like they added her for conflict, but there was already plenty of conflict in the dog’s efforts to stay alive and try to return to Megasaki and become pets again. It would have been a better story without the Tracy political protest sub-plot.
I’m not sure I agree. Tracy had these functions in the movie:
Expose the Kobayashi criminal activities
Rally the populace to support dogs and oppose Kobayashi
Find and prove the serum to cure the dogs
Act as a human counterpart to Duke, the conspiracy-nut dog*
Act as an (American) audience surrogate and translator
If you eliminate her, the rest of the activities possibly can be reassigned to others. Yoko can release the serum, another citizen of Megasaki can rally the populace. If you focus less on Megasaki City, you need less translation. If you eliminate the worst of Mayor Kobayashi’s evil (like not actually murdering a political rival!) you eliminate a lot of subplot.
But, then you’d have a different movie. Not necessarily a *better *movie. I think the Megasaki subplots add to the movie, myself. I like seeing the bits of Japanese culture and society.
*maybe he was right, and Kobayaski actually DID create snout fever in the lab and release it. I wouldn’t put it past him.
She’s terrible. We have the translator for the big scenes already. There are plenty of scenes they don’t bother translating–they expect the audience to understand them, so having her in other scenes to speak English and explain things isn’t consistent and needed. I would have been more ok with her just being Japanese and speaking Japanese and just have the conceit that the dog’s speak “english.”
But I also think almost everything in the city could have been cut from the story.
Okay, I can accept that. But then I guess that leaves me with the racist angle. There was really no reason for her not to be Japanese. Most of the Japanese dialog was subtitled anyway, so it’s stupid to add a caucasian character simply to translate the exposition. [Edited to add: and anyway, there was an actual translator character during the big meeting or whatever it was, and she felt like a natural fit in the story. There was no need for a “whitey” translater.]
Every time the movie changed to a scene with her in it, I got yanked out of the story. And irked. Then we’d go back to trash island with the dogs and I’d be like “thank god we’re back”.
Just saw it over the weekend; thought it was fantastic but I’m a sucker for Wes Anderson movies, animation, and dogs. I loved that big parts of it were in Japanese. I felt it helped because the dogs (except for Spot) didn’t understand Japanese either. Lots of great understated humor, paying attention really paid off.
The Tracy character seemed like a surrogate for the US based audience, so I was OK with that. Odd character, but all the characters are pretty odd.
I thought the bit at the end with Spots was because they used some robo-dog parts to rebuild him. So maybe the official story was that he died?
Wes Anderson is the most interesting director working today, and keeps getting better and better. Sure he’s as stylized as a Noh drama, but he manages to make it fascinating.
Forgive the late entry, but I just finally watched this last night.
My take, though perhaps a stretch, is that Megasaki had been subtly and not-so-subtly indoctrinated in the Kobayashi culture of dog-hate for 150 years, and that the movie really needed an outsider to come up with the POV of how the people were being manipulated. Yes, it might have been less questionable had it been someone from a different part of Japan, but as others have pointed out, there are conveniences to having this particular outsider speak English.
I loved the animation and the story in general—well done.
It’s like Inglourious Basterds in that respect.