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.
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.
Full reviewVery 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.
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