#ALPHA DOG MOVIE PARENTS GUIDE HOW TO#
Dolezal’s defense, she’d at least know how to make an Afro look convincing. If Rankin-Bass were to do “The Rachel Dolezal Story,” they could hire Tracy, though in Ms. Speaking of Black Power, Tracy sports a hairstyle you’d normally find on Black people or, in a less extreme fashion, on Art Garfunkel. It is she who rallies the protesters against the mayor, raising her hand in what looks suspiciously like the Black Power salute (which, if you recall, Anderson last rendered on a wolf in “Fantastic Mr.
She’s the only White person in “Isle of Dogs” and she is the film’s White savior. Tracy is an exchange student investigating the ouster of dogs for the school newspaper. But cat lovers may find their scapegoating here a bit problematic.įar, far more problematic is the character of Tracy (voice of Greta Gerwig). Judging by this and “ The Grand Budapest Hotel,” I get the feeling Wes Anderson doesn’t like cats. The cat-loving mayor has nefarious reasons for keeping the serum from succeeding, and he isn’t above murder as a preventive method. To quote “ Pulp Fiction,” they’re “worse than a sewing circle.” Perhaps some of this potential misinformation will help Atari find Spots.īack in Megasaki, a dog-loving scientist voiced by “ The Last Samurai”’s Ken Watanabe is testing a dog flu antidote serum he’s created with his colleague Yoko (voiced by, you guessed it, Yoko Ono). When not getting information from a pug named Oracle, the dogs rely on gossip as their primary means of information. Rounding out the alpha dog crew are Rex (voice of Edward Norton) and Duke (voice of Jeff Goldblum), who is so gossipy he puts Wendy Williams, Benita Butrell and TMZ to shame. Chief calls her a bitch at one point, which I suppose is accurate as far as Webster’s is concerned. Scarlett Johansson shows up in a thankless role as the only female dog to have any dialogue. (Chief always takes the only contrarian vote, rendering him powerless.) There’s also former sports mascot Boss (voice of Bill Murray), who is still wearing his team’s jersey, and mustachioed former dog food commercial star King (voice of Bob Balaban). There’s the leader Chief (voice of Bryan Cranston) who fancies himself the group’s leader despite the group’s reliance on democratically deciding every decision. They’re a motley crew to say the least, and despite being born and raised in Japan, they don’t understand Japanese at all. After crash landing his plane on the island, Atari meets the group of alpha dogs who serve as the film’s main characters. Atari plans to use his earpiece to help him find his beloved pet. He and Atari wore earpieces which served as a tracking device. Spots was his companion and his security detail. Spots is the first of many dogs who will inhabit Trash Island, and he is the only one who’s privy to a rescue mission from the mainland.ġ2-year old Atari (voice of Koyu Rankin) is the mayor’s ward, an orphan whose parents were killed in a tragic accident.
However, instead of being euthanized, each infected canine is dropped on a trash-filled island that evokes memories of “ Wall-E.” As a show of solidarity with dismayed dog owners throughout the city of Megasaki, its mayor deports his own dog, Spots (voice of Liev Schreiber). It’s also a place where man’s best friend has been banished due to a dangerous outbreak of “dog flu,” which is apparently harmful to humankind. It’s a place where every explosion is rendered as a cutesy mushroom cloud and the public speeches always include haiku.
“Isle of Dogs” takes place in Anderson’s rather skewed interpretation of Japan. This may work in the spaces of Anderson’s meticulously crafted universe of films like “ Rushmore” and “ The Royal Tenenbaums,” but “Isle of Dogs” is set in an actual foreign country whose culture and traditions Anderson unwisely commandeers. He keeps everything at an annoying hipster’s ironic distance, valuing aesthetics over meaning and context. But unlike the warm Miyazaki, Anderson is a very cold director. You would think Anderson would be the perfect director to pay homage to this master of animation no other director working today has a bigger compulsion for visuals than Anderson. Even in his least successful ventures, the attention to world-building detail is staggering. Anderson has gone on record citing the influence of legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki on “Isle of Dogs.” Films like “ Spirited Away” and “ My Neighbor Totoro” depict Miyazaki’s visions of Japan in ways that are both awe-inspiringly beautiful and terrifying.