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Wednesday, May 15, 2019

ALPHA (2018)

Albert Hughes, stepping back from co-director brother Allen and even further back in time, goes all Pre-Historic on this Adolescent Boy and His Feral Dog story. No doubt a Passion Project, cobbled from his ‘original’ story, this survival fable tosses a tribal chief’s son over a cliff and into the wilderness during the annual buffalo hunt, then follows a danger-packed, obstacle-strewn race against winter to return home, joined by the wild canine he wounded, tended, befriended & domesticated. It's a 'can’t-miss' vehicle that misses badly thanks to poor structure, editing its way out of impossible situations & overplaying resilience to the elements while fumbling suspension of disbelief thru unconvincing CGI animal renderings that give off little threat. Plus action & mystic vistas exhaustingly tricked up with showy computer-enhanced tracking shots or as visually tweaked cosmic postcards. It takes some doing to make a Boy-and-His-Dog pic that doesn’t leave a wet eye in the house, and then bow out with an insulting, over-sentimental tag.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Our poster calls this an ‘Incredible True Story.’ Incredible, all right, as in ‘impossible or hard to believe.’

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Tame fire rather than pets in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s QUEST FOR FIRE/’82, which has problems of its own, but also a surprising sense of humor. OR: Hungary’s WHITE GOD/’14, where packs of roaming dogs take back city streets. Done with hundreds of real dogs (mostly from shelters) and zero CGI, it’s 101 DALMATIANS meets CUJO. (Both FIRE and GOD covered below)

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