Harrison Ford stars in this live-action and CGI-animated remake (of the 1935 adventure film based on Jack London's classic novel) about a sled dog struggling to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. This is director Chris Sanders's fourth film, with the previous three each receiving Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature.
Buck is a domesticated dog who is uprooted from his comfortable California home and transplanted to the Alaskan Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s. Now part of a mail delivery sled team and on the adventure of a lifetime, he will eventually find his true place in the world.
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I don’t know what it is about the story of a stolen canine forced to become a sledge dog in the Yukon but Jack London’s 1903 novel has seen about as many screen adaptations as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This new version’s unique for casting a completely CGI dog as the lead, and while it’s sorely missing the budget to make it completely convincing, there’s a morally wholesome reason for doing so.
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Very much a film of two halves – a breathless first-act gives way to a more sedate, character-driven second – Call's CGI shortcomings also slightly blight what is actually a terrific performance from Harrison Ford.
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It's an epic adventure perfect for the tween audience looking for a family film that's an alternative to pure animation.
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The ghost of Rin Tin Tin and his trainer should howl at Call Of The Wild, an over-produced version of the classic shaggy dog story and a textbook case of why and where not to use CGI.
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A sentimental but solid dependable retelling of an oft-told tale, it doesn’t do anything radical with the material but gets by on well mounted set-pieces and Ford’s grizzled gravitas.
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The Jack London novel gets a semi-CG 1960s-nature-film makeover, and that's more fakery than it needed. But Harrison Ford rescues the journey.
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The film certainly moves briskly enough, and it looks terrific, thanks to the handsome cinematography by two-time Oscar-winner Janusz Kaminski. Particularly fun are the scenes in which Buck becomes part of a mail-delivering sled dog team led by a French-Canadian couple enjoyably played by Omar Sy and Cara Gee. And the final sequences, depicting Buck's inevitably succumbing to the call of the wild and bonding with a pack of timber wolves, are moving, even if the animals are CGI-created.
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Beethoven meets Gladiator in this old-fashioned doggy adventure from Disney, which basically jumps out of the screen and starts licking your face. It’s digital in its effects but analogue in its heart.
Full reviewWe aren’t aware of any way to watch The Call of the Wild (2020) in South Africa. If we’ve got that wrong, please contact us.
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