The director’s new Isle of Dogs is as meticulously crafted and whimsical as you’d expect, but it lacks substance.
Probably no American filmmaker is as distinctive as Wes Anderson. If you were shown anonymous 30-second clips from the next film of every famous director, you could conceivably identify his work with 20 seconds to spare.
Anderson’s ninth film, the stop-motion-animation comedy for grownups Isle of Dogs, contains all his trademarks: the absurd dialogue delivered with absolute deadpan; the characters positioned alone at the exact center of the screen staring into the camera; the meticulous production design; the featherweight drollery. For the first half hour I sat with a dazed smile of appreciation. After 45 minutes, though, I wondered: Is this . . . it? Are all of these adorable little touches going to be so many pieces of flair hung on a cockamamie, sort-of-funny, really thin plot? Anderson’s films tend to inspire coffee-table books. This one is a coffee-table book, fun to flip through or dip into but not ideal for reading from cover to cover.
Raised in Texas, Anderson has by now given all kinds of far-flung locales his distinct, quirky treatment: From an idealized New York City to the shores of the Mediterranean, from India to rural England, from maritime New England to Central Europe and now Japan. Isle of Dogs, which has the same throwback animation style as Fantastic Mr. Fox, his wonderful 2009 adaptation of Roald Dahl, builds on a typically kooky back story of an ancient feud between cat-loving and dog-loving clans. Today the evil and brutish scion of the cat lovers, Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Konichi Nomurat), rules absolutely over the fancifully corrupt city of “Megasaki.” He is designed as a parody of a Kurosawa warlord, so naturally there will be think pieces comparing him to President Trump. Yet part of the disarming character of Anderson’s oeuvre is its complete lack of topicality. Not once in Anderson’s career have I gotten the sense that he is a filmmaker who reads the papers, much less gets impassioned about what he finds there. He’s still building the nutty dioramas that occupied him as a boy, only on a much larger scale.
Kobayashi fiendishly infects all of the city’s dogs with flu as a pretext for declaring them a public menace and exiling them all to the otherwise-uninhabited Trash Island, where they form a pack and plot their return while learning about the conspiracy. The matches of canines with voice actors are delightful: The gruff, battle-scarred leader, Chief, is voiced by Bryan Cranston. (“I don’t sit,” he says.) The saucy, immaculately groomed show dog is Scarlett Johansson. Edward Norton, who still has a boyish and pleading voice, is the voice of dog reason, Rex. A priceless Jeff Goldblum has many of the nuttiest and best lines as Duke. And in his eighth consecutive Anderson movie, the filmmaker’s ideal delivery system for dry quips, Bill Murray, provides crucial wit as Boss. Liev Schreiber, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, Courtney B. Vance, Tilda Swinton, and even Yoko Ono pitch in with voice work elsewhere. (Ono’s presence, like Anderson’s, suggests something special, but not necessarily enjoyable.)
The effect is like Gilbert and Sullivan via Charles M. Schulz: From moment to moment, the film is endearing, sweet, odd, and gorgeous.
In Megasaki, an earnest exchange student (Greta Gerwig) working for the school paper tries to Woodward-and-Bernstein her way through the secret history of the dogs’ mistreatment while a twelve-year-old aviator named Atari (Koyu Rankin) flies to the Isle of Dogs in search of his own beloved pet, who has also been sent there. Atari’s aircraft comes to ground via what must be the cutest plane crash you’ll ever see on film, and the dogs don’t quite know what to make of his arrival. “I have a question,” says one. “Are we eating him or is this a rescue?” The dogs proceed to do whimsical Anderson-y things like wandering unscathed through a combination trash compactor and incinerator. A human flunky is known as “Major-Domo.”
The effect is like Gilbert and Sullivan via Charles M. Schulz: From moment to moment, the film is endearing, sweet, odd, and gorgeous. The screen teems with filigreed cuteness, even in the subtitles, which Anderson designs as a satire of lovably garbled Japanese translations. Some of the individual scenes are brilliant, notably the flirtatious encounter between Cranston’s mangy, scrappy mutt and Johansson’s luminous, ethereal show dog, which both actors make funny by playing their lines completely straight.
Anderson’s craftsmanship may be as perfect as a snowflake, but it’s as substantial as one too. By the second half, my interest was flagging; the central caper was just too goofy to hold my interest and the movie gets bogged down in scenes set among the humans that are not nearly as fun as the ones starring the dogs. The last 40 minutes limp by. Mr. Fox had a far more developed and energetic story and yet ran 15 minutes shorter. Come prepared for a feast, if you like, but be aware that Anderson’s buffet offers only varieties of cotton candy.