(Dir. Wes Anderson 2018)
PG-13, Anderson typical violence. If you've seen Fantastic Mr. Fox you know what content to expect from this. I finally got to watch a Wes Anderson movie in theaters and, in case you couldn't tell from the theme of my blog, I really love Wes Anderson. Before I say anything else, I do think that this was a very good movie, but when compared to his other works I can't say that it's my favorite. It's possible that I over-hyped myself before I went to see it because the other two people I went with loved it and they did not have great expectations. I think I was mostly caught off guard because this felt different than a lot of his other films, for one it was much more plot driven than his movies usually. Generally in Wes Anderson's films the plot tends to take a back seat to the characters and their relationships with each other, but in this it almost felt the opposite. The characters had a clear goal driving the plot and, unlike many of his other films, a clear antagonist that they were working against. My main issue is that I think that this movie spread itself too thin. The cast of characters was much larger than is typically found in an Anderson movie and in addition to that a lot of time was spent on world building and presenting excuses to translate everything into english. Because of all this it felt to me like Isle of Dogs was missing I've come to love about Wes Anderson's movies, how much they focus on and explore the identities of their characters. That being said it was a beautiful story and the plot was original, even for Wes. A dystopian Japan, set in the distant future, has exiled all their dogs to Trash Island due to an over saturation of pups and the pervasive dog flu. Or at least, that's what the corrupt government wants you to think. It turns out that a cure for dog flu is available, but is being suppressed by a cat loving government that seeks to eradicate all dogs. The movie follows a young boy, hellbent on finding his dog, the pack of dogs guiding him through trash island, and a young girl fighting governmental corruption on the mainland. I gotta say I wish that Wes Anderson would've just dropped the romantic sub-plots in this one. It seemed like while writing this they kept going back in forth on how PG to keep this movie, struggling with Wes' natural inclination towards R-rated material and wanting to make this movie as marketable as possible. As a result the romances felt awkward, clumsy, and forced. Despite how much I've complained about things in this post I really did like this movie. The characters were amazing, which is kind of why I was so upset we didn't get to learn more about them, and it was a well thought out plot. I can't even really say I'm upset about the differences from his past films because he's obviously trying to branch out and try something different from his usual film in Isle of Dogs and I look forward to seeing what else comes from this experimentation. All in all my main take from this movie is that Wes Anderson is definitely not a cat person.
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Aubrey KirchhoffI'm just screaming into the void and somehow getting graded on it. Archives
April 2018
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