“What is the meaning of life? Are we here for a reason?” asks the protagonist pup in the unironically titled A Dog’s Purpose. Dog lover and director Lasse Hallström, who also made My Life As a Dog and Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, follows one canine (voiced by Josh Gad) through its various reincarnations (deaths notwithstanding) and respective owners: a German shepherd police dog, an endearingly sluggish corgi and, in its most adorable iteration, a ginger-eyelashed red retriever named Bailey. Said retriever lands in the scrawny arms of eight-year-old only child Ethan (Bryce Gheisar), the canine companion a welcome distraction from his alcoholic father (Luke Kirby). Teen Ethan and his girlfriend are played by Netflix TV stars KJ Apa (Riverdale’s Archie) and Britt Robertson (Girlboss’s Sophia) respectively, while the adult Ethan who re-emerges in the film’s third act is a gruff-voiced, tender-spirited Dennis Quaid. Heartstrings are pulled, tears are jerked.
Hallström begins the story in 1960s America, against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, steeping its mawkish man’s-best-friend narrative in nostalgia and shooting bursts of the film from a dog’s-eye-view low angle. It’s hard not to be charmed by the film’s pack of hyperactive, wriggling puppies, but there’s only so much time to be spent watching them play before it becomes eye-wateringly banal. Bailey is given a human voice with which he narrates the story, but is spared any additional anthropomorphism, his inner life guided entirely by animal instinct. Yes, it’s a kid’s film, but by hitting all the emotional beats – and none of the intellectual ones – its literal title hints at, A Dog’s Purpose sets the bar for its own existential investigation pretty low.
