Dennis Quaid stars in A Dog’s Purpose, a film that flips the traditional script by giving voice (Josh Gad) to multiple incarnations of man’s best friend.The Associated Press
It is difficult to consider A Dog's Purpose without noting the controversy surrounding it.
Last week – just days before the film's scheduled release – TMZ published a video of one of the film's performing dogs apparently in distress, as a trainer attempts to push him into rushing water. The video prompted calls for a boycott from PETA, as well as a cancelled press tour by star Dennis Quaid (a scheduled interview with The Globe and Mail was canned the night the video in question was released). The film's producer, Gavin Polone, has gone on the defensive, accusing the video of being deliberately misleading, while Quaid said the same in comments to Entertainment Tonight, wondering why someone truly concerned about animal welfare would hesitate to release a tape showing the alleged abuse of a dog on set until a week before the film's release.
The unsettling undercurrent is that we'll never know how Hercules, the German Shepherd in the TMZ video, or any of the other dogs on the set of A Dog's Purpose felt about their treatment. That's not to say we oughtn't take Polone and Quaid at their respective words – that the animals on the film's set were treated kindly and with care by a team of dedicated trainers and animal-welfare professionals – but rather that without the ability to communicate directly with the movie's four-legged talent, the issue will remain an unresolved case of human-said/human-said. Put simply, Hercules just can't speak for himself.
The relationships that we, people, cultivate with our dogs is based on our understanding of and responding to their non-verbal cues; they depend on us to read them, because they also depend on us for … well, just about everything else. A Dog's Purpose flips this script somewhat, in that its entire plot is narrated by the titular canine, Bailey (voiced by Josh Gad). Bailey begins life as a stray red retriever in the 1960s, captured by a pair of ne'er-do-wells and locked in the back of a hot car until he's saved by a kindly mother and her son. That son, Ethan, becomes Bailey's best friend, as the two support each other through growing pains and familial turmoil, including the alcoholism of Ethan's father (Canadian actor Luke Kirby) and a burgeoning romance with schoolmate Hannah (Britt Robertson).
Eventually, Ethan moves away for college, leaving Bailey behind. And at this point, Bailey is a senior dog, so … you know what happens next.
And then, he's back! Only this time, he's a female German shepherd police dog in the 1980s. Later, he returns as Tino, a chubby corgi owned by a college student in the nineties. And finally, he's Buddy, an enormous cross-breed who escapes his unloving owners to fulfill his ultimate quest of a reunion with the now middle-aged Ethan (Quaid).
Of course, in order for Bailey to be reincarnated as so many different dogs, he must first die – and then die again, and again. It is punishing to fall in love with Bailey's various incarnations – and to endear oneself to the relationship he has with his various minders – before once again watching him say goodbye to his human family, and they him (and probably even more so for the younger cohort of A Dog's Purpose's target family demographic). If you've recently – or, perhaps, ever – lost a pet, this isn't the film for you.
Once Bailey finds his way back to Ethan (and reunites him with Hannah, now a widow), the dog must convince his former owner that, despite his changed appearance and the passing of several decades, he is in fact Ethan's childhood dog. Pet owners who are deeply familiar with the idiosyncrasies of their animals may find the way Bailey accomplishes this heartwarming. Canine-ambivalent skeptics may find it preposterous. In reality, it – like A Dog's Purpose as a whole – is a mix of both. But it also rings true, because, remember: dogs can't talk, but they depend on us to read their non-verbal cues, and to respond accordingly.
Despite the constant reincarnations, A Dog's Purpose doesn't contain much in the way of spirituality. But any agnostic big-picture messaging it may be reaching for doesn't quite come through, either. Bailey's journey through space and time and life and death to reunite with Ethan only seems to reinforce the notion that a dog's purpose is to be man's best friend. And we knew that already.