Disclaimer Before the Review
This will be a very long review if you have seen the reading time before you venture into this movie. I have loads, and I mean loads, to talk about it. In addition, this review will contain a rant towards the end. Needless to say, Arctic Dogs has a special place in hell for me.
Introduction
Well, fellow adventurers, Blaziker… is in a very bad mood today, mainly because the movie I wanted to talk about today, as much as it hurts to me, is a personal demon of mine, something that I had been waiting for this moment to talk about on this blog. Because, unfortunately, for today, I am going to cover one of the worst, if not among the top five, worst theatrical animated movies of all time, and that movie… is Arctic Dogs. That’s right. Today is the 5th anniversary since the theatrical release of the cold brew in the United States of America, so I am talking about it!
Supposedly ready for a 2018 release, but was pushed back to November 2019, Arctic Dogs (also known as Arctic Justice, also known as Polar Squad, also known as Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad) is an animated movie courtesy of Assemblage Entertainment, one of the two animation studios that made the infamous Norm of the North three years earlier, and directed by (allegedly) famous horror film auteur David Cronenberg’s nephew, Aaron Woodley, who had previously directed the equally terrible Spark: A Space Tail. Swifty, an arctic fox working for a postal delivery service, wishes to be a “Top Dog” and get a chance to deliver packages to the town. However, while he fights for it, an evil force beneath the town hatches a plan that might result in the destruction of the town itself.
Look, I’m not going to sugar-coat this, but I actually paid money to watch Arctic Dogs with a childhood friend, knowing that I will not have a great time. We both wanted to see how bad that movie was and the result? Well, it was way worse than what I imagine. Ever since I watched that movie, I had been so angry about it that I often insulted that movie to death on social media for the past few years. In fact, besides Alpha and Omega, Norm of the North and recently Marmaduke, no theatrical animated movie had insulted me more than this cold brew. I had reviewed that movie on Letterboxd as one of my earliest reviews, but since five years had passed, I decide to (unfortunately) re-watch this movie and made a comprehensive review of it, feeling like it was time to re-review this thing. Sometimes, you will have to watch one of those awful movies, but the thing is, pain is necessary, and watching bad animated movies does help in appreciating the great animated movies even more.
With that said, let’s get this special delivery on the road, shall we?
(And one more thing, because the pictures from the movie are pretty bad indeed, I will limit to about four images. Trust me, it’s for your (and my) good)
Key Information
- Director: Aaron Woodley
- Animation Studio: Assemblage Entertainment (with AMBI Entertainment and AIC Studios)
- Country of Origin: Canada, India, Italy
- Rating: PG
- Release Date: 28 November 2019 (In Singapore)
Trailer
The Review
Story
(Spoiler alert: I will be discussing key elements in the movie, but since very few bothered to watch the movie because of how awful that movie is, you can ignore that. However, I suggest you watch the movie first so that you can get a sense of what the movie was about. Anyway, back to the review.)
Usually, I would talk about the movie’s story and characters in the same section. However, as I have loads to say about both of these elements for Arctic Dogs, they each have their own section.
When you are producing an animated movie, and the animated movie in question has a somewhat generic concept or plot, the least you could do is to execute it properly. This is because for a lot of generic animated movies I covered for the past few years (especially a lot of the foreign CG animated movies I specialise in), I often let off those studios behind those movies if they executed them well. There are a handful of movies with generic plots but are poorly executed that aggravate me, but in the rare occurrence where the movie’s story was so poorly executed beyond redemption, it made me flip. Arctic Dogs is one of those movies, and boy, I had loads to talk about.
For an animated movie with such a generic plot, what frustrated was how broken the story was, which makes Arctic Dogs one of the most incohesive animated movies released into theatres. For starters, there are many, many plot holes that were often left unexplained, like why the top dogs ran in bi-pedal in the opening sequence, why the puffins kidnap the top dogs, why Magda and the Arctic Blast Delivery Service (ABDS) held a party to celebrate Swifty’s successful first day as a Top Dog even if she was doubting Swifty’s abilities, or why Swifty went down to the tighty whitys towards the end of the movie. There is lack of cohesion in animated movies, and there is no cohesion. Arctic Dogs falls into the latter.
In addition to the non-existent cohesion, there is also the movie forcing a non-existent conflict, which would involve Swifty, but more about him later. The conflict involving Otto blowing up the town with a bit of fracking and Swifty being involved just because of his job was laughable, as they are both mutually exclusive events. They both do not have plausible reason to hate one another, thus making their conflict between each other almost non-existent. In fact, I reckon the writing team involved included this just because every animated movie needs to have a conflict. Even if that is, at least the conflict needs to make sense, and this one does not.
It also kind of shock me that for a movie released in 2019, we will still be having certain animated movie cliches and tropes that have died down thankfully. While more recent animated movies rely less on such tropes or executed those tropes properly or more creatively, it amazes me at the number of tropes and stereotypes Arctic Dogs include in their movie, especially with character stereotypes, and almost none are properly executed. I mean, count the number of tropes you can point at in the movie, and you will understand how cliché that movie was.
Even worse than the above is the comedy, or should I say, the non-existent comedy in the movie. Yes, I had seen a good number of unfunny jokes in certain animated movies, even some of the best, but Arctic Dogs has so many unfunny jokes, it prolongs the 90-minute runtime. Most of the jokes (a majority from James Franco’s Lemmy) are offensive jokes that does not have much punchline or build-up, especially with some fart jokes. It was apparent that the writers were trying very hard to be funny, and that is a big mistake, because comedy flows naturally like a running tap, not forces out like a burst pipe
However, the biggest problem with the story is that it felt like this story was written as an intelligence test to the audience. This is because it leaves little to no imagination and that the dumbed down story was a way to insult the intelligence of the moviegoers who paid to see the movie, especially to the children audience. Children would learn so many bad morals about Arctic Dogs, especially from Swifty’s actions throughout the movie, while adults would frown about how this experience is a waste of time for them, which explained some walkouts during the movie’s theatrical release. As for my experience in the movie, more about that later as well.
For a movie with such a generic plot, there were many, many things in the story I hate. Having a plot that is safe, generic and boring is one thing, but having so many basic writing issues and so many poorly executed elements in the story while mocking its intended audience that it makes it boring is another. Even worse, of the five writers involved, two of them are Cal Brunker and Bob Barlen, who both previously wrote for Son of Bigfoot, Bigfoot family (the sequel to Son of Bigfoot) Paw Patrol: The Movie and its sequel, Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, and recently The Inseparables (with Cal even directing the two Paw Patrol movies), five movies with well-realised stories in spite of their issues. When even they cannot save the movie, it was very clear that the story was beyond redemption which frankly, I would not blame them entirely for the shambolic story. Even I will resign in protest if I have to write a movie as broken as this, knowing this would ruin my career.
Characters
Even when the story in animated movies is not good, a great cast of characters can make up for a bad story. However, most of the time, if the story is not well-written, chances are, the same goes for the characters as there is a co-relation between how well-developed the characters are based on the quality of writing. When the story in Arctic Dogs is beyond broken and insulting, you would expect the same low quality of writing to impact the depth of the characters. While this is the great, it was the magnitude that shocked me.
To summarise, the overall cast of characters is what you would expect from an animated movie in around the late 2000s or early 2010s, not in 2019. Most of the cast are caricatures of typical animated movie characters you would expect, but executed way, way worse. How worse? Let me explain…
We start off with Swifty (Jeremy Renner, aka Hawkeye), who is a typical animated movie protagonist that might be one of the worst written protagonists in any theatrical animated movie I cover. I mean, he is your typical protagonist that wants to make his dreams come true, but more often than not, he is an absolute jerk. He is selfish and only cares about himself for most of the movie, he is manipulative towards other characters especially towards Jade, PB and Magda with constant lying, he is very annoying with numerous lame jokes and all, and worse still, it is very hard to root for him because of it. I previously published an article comparing him to Judy Hopps from Zootopia, and the differences in their personalities are night and day. Having such an unlikable hero is not how you make a good protagonist.
Speaking of other characters, Swifty’s love interest in Jade (Heidi Klum) is uninteresting with almost nothing memorable about her, and her accent is so heavy and uninspired (Given Klum is from Germany, and she voiced another character, more on that later), PB (creative name by the way since he is a polar bear, voiced by Alec Baldwin) is also not much memorable, Lemmy is an annoying comic relief character and Magda (Angelica Hudson) also offers nothing. Honestly, I have nothing much to say about the characters so far because they are so one-dimensional, but even the writers fumbled with giving them their moments.
However, I had to give a dishonourable shoutout to the French conspiracy otters, Leopold (Omar Sy, who also voiced Swifty in the French dub) and Bertha (Klum) are some of the most annoying sounding characters in most of the recent animated movies. Plus, given these two characters the stereotypical French personalities (even if Klum, as I said it again, is German), it is unexplained why they exist in the movie, and no reasoning with justify it because they are simply unnecessary. Also, insert race card here, because it’s clearly playing on stereotypes in a terrible way.
The only other somewhat memorable character has to be the villain, Otto (John Cleese, who once again had to carry another terrible animated movie on his own). Despite being yet another one-dimensional villain and that his plans simply do not make much sense with a non-existent conflict with Swifty, the moments with Otto and his rip-off puffin minions (who somehow got their own spin-off cartoon series starring THE Johnny Depp as one of the main puffins) does make it interesting, although that is only a consolation to how unmemorable and unbearable the overall cast of characters is.
As for the voice acting, I mentioned in the past how professional voice actors can elevate any animated movie and that acting in a live-action movie and voice acting in a studio require two different skillsets, it seems that with the exception of Renner and Cleese, the voice acting characters are dull and uninspiring. The heavy accents do not make this movie any better, and Klum’s voice acting for both of her characters are flatter! Still, while Cleese delivered yet another solid voice acting performance and Renner was genuinely trying his best to voice act (even if his accent is wrong for a protagonist you want to root for), the voice acting performance is not suitable for a theatrical animated movie. And speaking of, the fact that Arctic Dogs was able to get so many celebrities to voice act is suspicious, I must say.
And no, before you ask, the various foreign dubbing did not work for me too. While the foreign dubs are much more competent, the foreign dubs are still very flat. Honestly, if the foreign dubbers realise from looking at the script that this movie was hopeless, I can understand the low energy in those dubs too.
Animation
We are grateful to be in a timeline when animation in a lot of fantastic animated movies are exciting and vibrant again. As the years go by, the quality of animation, even in a lot of the smaller and foreign CG animated movies I covered for the past few years, are improving year by year. Still, there are a few animated movies every year whose animation is not up to scratch, or even worse, ageing very terribly. In the case of Arctic Dogs, for a movie released in 2019, it sure does look like an animated movie that was released… in the late 2000s. I am not kidding, the movie’s animation had seen better days.
Let me give you a surprise pop quiz: the budget for Arctic Dogs is around US$50 million based on previous reports, but how much of this budget was spent on animation? If you guess around the US$10 to US$25 million range, chances are, you are most likely to be on point. Even so, I had seen many great animated movies on such low budgets, but I guess the team at Assemblage Entertainment (the India-based animation studio that also co-worked on another infamous bad animated movie, Norm of the North) and AIC Studios (owned by Andrea Iervolino, co-founder of Italy-based Iervolino and Lady Barcadi Entertainment, who has the rights to Arctic Dogs) did not get the memo, because the animation is beyond cheap and horrendous!
Beginning with the character designs, and they are very bland and uninspiring! If you had seen the horrendous movie poster (more about the marketing later), you know that the character designs just do not have personality, but instead looked like assets from an open-source platform. Given that this was a movie based in the Arctic, it was not surprising for the background designs to lack any personality as well, as the place is mostly snow, but even that was not well done as they do not look like proper snow, but instead look plasticky. As for the design of the town, they lack in detail, soul and personality too. You see where this is going? The animation designs are just soulless!
However, it is not just the character and background designs that are poorly done, but it is also the overall animation quality. For a movie supposedly made on US$50 million, it was very clear that the budget for the animation must be less than half the budget, because first off, the character rendering is non-existent! Almost every character look pixelated, and the detailing in these characters is laughably bad. Comparing it to another photorealistic, anthropomorphic-based animated movie in Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness, and the quality differences in the character details in both movies are obvious. Heck, you can even throw in Spycies in there, and while some character designs in Spycies are weird, the gritty hyper-realistic style gave those characters so much edginess and personality.
Second of all, look at the movement of the characters and backgrounds in the movie. There are times where the frames per second dropped significantly, resulting in some pixelated moments that looked even worse when you show it on a higher resolution monitor. Even worse, when watching the movie once more, there were certain noticeable glitches throughout the movie that is the reason of the lack of any proper quality control in the animation, making certain action sequences and background look unfinished.
These reasons are why I do not believe Arctic Dogs has a US$50 million budget, because clearly, very little of the budget was utilised in the animation and quality control, and more to the celebrities who voice act in the movie. When the animation lacks any uniqueness and quality, is it worth putting it out in theatres for the whole world to see the animation? I cannot believe such a poorly made animated movie got a theatrical release instead of two excellent animated movies that came out on Netflix at around the same month: Klaus and I Lost My Body. Clearly, the animation industry is doing it backwards with that moment…
Soundtrack
I talked about soundtracks in animated movies a lot more than usual moviegoers, and that is because soundtracks can make or break an animated movie. In fact, having a great and memorable musical score and soundtrack can elevate an otherwise ok animated movie, which was exhibited first hand with Capture the Flag and Rock Dog. However, the opposite is true, as a bad soundtrack can ruin the movie experience.
Usually, unless the movie is a musical, soundtracks in animated movies are an afterthought and are one of the less important elements of the movie. Still, it can be impressive if the soundtrack does leave a lasting impression, and in the case of Arctic Dogs… It might be one of the most unbearable movie soundtracks of all time.
First off, this musical score was composed by David Buckley, who is a well-known film composer himself. Why is this a bad thing, however? Allow me to divulge some of the previous movies and series he scored for. The Nice Guys, Jason Bourne 2016, Angel Has Fallen, Greenland, Nobody and more recently The Sandman Netflix series. Most of the movies and series he scored are action-based, high octane thrillers, and that is the problem. AMBI Entertainment (also owned by Andrea Iervolino who is basically in charge of producing the movie) hired the wrong music composer for Arctic Dogs, and that definitely shows in the musical score itself.
One major issue regarding the Arctic Dogs score is how obnoxiously and unnecessarily grand the soundtrack was. Almost every part of the score had to over-emphasize the scene it was accompanying and as the movie goes on, the score becomes so annoying, it is easy to block out the musical accompaniments. Listening to the score on my wireless earbuds made me want to unplug those earbuds straightaway, which must mean they are of high quality to accentuate how annoying the musical score is.
Also, let us talk about the soundtrack for a second, can we? Now, it is no secret that Jeremy Renner is a talented singer on top of being a fairly competent actor, and even his EP, The Medicine, had some nice tracks, not gonna lie. With that said, the songs he composed and sang for the Arctic Dogs soundtrack might just be the most generic and the most annoying original songs for any animated movie soundtrack, whether mainstream or not. The five songs Renner provided for the movie soundtrack do not add anything, they are basically used as a distraction from the fact that this movie was bad and more importantly, they serve no purpose in the entire movie at all. Even the end credits song “Centre of Gravity” is annoying as well.
Usually, soundtracks are not a big issue in a lot of non-musical animated movies, but Arctic Dogs is one exception to this rule. The overall quality of the soundtrack is akin to Nickelback’s worst hits: annoying, formulae and above all else, distracting. Even when you consider that it is a non-mainstream animated movie, the Arctic Dogs soundtrack has to be one of the most unbearable animated movie soundtracks I had the displeasure of listening to.
Other Elements
Speaking of the sound, there is also the matter of the sound mixing and editing in this movie. Normally, sound engineering is usually not a major issue in a lot of animated movies, whether mainstream or not. However, this is the first animated movie where the sound mixing ruined the movie experience for me.
Besides making the already horrible musical score and soundtrack even more tone-deaf and obnoxious, but it made the dialogue sounds muddier. I think this is the first ever animated movie that I covered where the sound mixing is even worse than Tenet, which has to be an achievement on its own. While I was able to follow most of the dialogue in Tenet, I was unable to get through some of the lines in Arctic Dogs, which was coupled by terrible line delivery.
However, the kicker for me has to be the “marketing”, or lack thereof. A lot of recent animated movies had suffered from bad marketing, but the marketing in Arctic Dogs might as well be non-existent, because man, the marketing content is beyond terrible. The poster looks like it came from a terrible video game from the 2000s, and the terrible-looking fonts cheapen the poster even further.
Even worse, the online marketing is not just non-existent, but the marketing (from its abandoned Twitter page) is something to be behold. The marketing comprise of two trailers plus terrible GIFs to the point where I wondered whether the marketing team involved were that serious when making the promotional content, or whether they did the bare minimum, realising that this movie was beyond hope anyway.
Normally, unless there are other elements that stood out in the movie, I do not usually have much to say about the minor elements, but the fact that the other elements are as bad as the other big elements in Arctic Dogs leave a sight to be behold. I am just speechless that virtually every element in Arctic Dogs, even the minor elements, are as terrible as you would expect.
And now…
Level of Enjoyment
Alright, you want to know how I feel about Arctic Dogs? Well, long story short… I despise it.
I think what made me not enjoy the movie was what this movie was released in theatres, and it had extremely terrible marketing. In fact, it was so obvious of a joke that I mocked it numerous times before its eventual release in Singapore, even going as far as saying that this will be the worst animated movie of 2019. Guess what? This was a massive understatement.
With that said, it is very rare for me to be angry at a movie, especially since I had a high tolerance rate towards animated movies, even the B-rated foreign CG animated movies that I mostly cover. This is because I understand how difficult it is to produce an animated movie, from storyboarding and pitching, to rigging and rendering, to voice acting and the works. Animated movies take time, blood, sweat and tears to materialise, and what Arctic Dogs did was to insult the entire animation process with little to no effort whatsoever.
The fact that this animated movie is “acceptable” for theatrical animation standards is beyond tone-deaf. I covered some fantastic animated movies that were relegated to streaming services, especially with Klaus and I Lost My Body, two fantastic indie animated movies that only got a majority Netflix release in the same month Arctic Dogs appeared. While Klaus and I Lost My Body thankfully took over the conversation, the fact that Arctic Dogs require two way superior animated movies to distract its mess proves my point.
Arctic Dogs is beyond soulless. In fact, given this was an Entertainment Studios movie, a distributor infamous for releasing terrible movies with overinflated budgets into theatres, it was clearly on brand that only it would dare to pick it up for a theatrical release, and thankfully, it bombed both critically and financially, which makes up for this experience on a warm November afternoon at a cinema inside a now demolished shopping centre.
Conclusion (And a Rant)
Sigh… I cannot believe this movie exists, and now that I re-watched it again, I feel I need to erase that movie and all of its follow-ups from existence because not only is Arctic Dogs one of the most unwatchable animated movies released in theatres of all time, but it is a massive insult to the theatrical animation industry, especially with studios that work tirelessly to produce their dream animated movies.
Arctic Dogs is proof that the industry can make basically anything, and the target audience will eat it up. A poorly written story riddled with seriously large plot holes and unfunny gags, a cast of stereotypical and annoying characters that is so hard to root for, disgusting animation quality that reeks of quality control, an unbearable soundtrack coupled with an obnoxiously annoying music score that were amplified by terrible sound editing, and a complete lack of passion to produce a good animated movie. Arctic Dogs is an insult to the theatrical animation industry by showing that such a low quality, low budget and low IQ animated movie can be released in theatres, and its follow-ups only prove that this movie was made solely to make money, which is ironic given that it bombed critically and financially.
However, what was clear was who was the most at fault for the failure of Arctic Dogs, and that goes to three people: Bryon Allen, the founder and CEO of Allen Media Group, whose Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures distributed the movie in North America, Andrea Iervolino, co-founder of Iervolino and Lady Barcadi Entertainment who has the rights to Arctic Dogs, and Monika Barcadi, wife to Andrea Iervolino and co-founder of Iervolino and Lady Barcadi Entertainment.
For these three people, I am very, very angry at how you three got away with this, especially since we now have an Arctic Dogs franchise from you, even going as far as to having two live-action Arctic Dogs Christmas movies (with two more coming our way), on top of Johnny Puff: Secret Mission for crying out loud! It was very clear that Arctic Dogs was an animated movie that exists simply to make money and capitalise on the theatrical animation market. However, not only did the movie flopped critically and financially, but you also gave a lot of the non-mainstream animated movies a bad rep and perception, and less and less people would be willing to watch such movies that are of much, much higher quality than this piece of trash. I am so mad at how you three mocked the animation industry, you three should be ashamed of the damage you had caused, but given how rich you three are, I assume you three would not care.
The reason why I ranted about Arctic Dogs for the past few years was because for a movie made on $50 million, the least it should do is to be entertaining and enjoyable for the target audience, not to be an insult to the people that paid money to see this crap, me included. We all deserve better quality animated movies that deserve to be in theatres more, and the fact that Arctic Dogs is also a theatrical release serves as an injustice to the entire theatrical animation industry, while mocking at the target audience at the same time.
I am sick and tired of terrible animated movies like this crappy cold brew that is a waste of time, money and space and believe me, those that had seen the movie would want their money back. You three should apologise to the entire animation industry for disrespecting animation as a medium and a canvas to tell compelling stories and beautiful animation, and I do not want to see the three of you being involved in another animated movie project and mocking the entire industry ever again!!!
(Breathes consistency to catch a breath)
Man, I am so pissed at this movie exists, but finally, it’s over. I finally completed my Arctic Dogs review, and this was not a pretty sight. Well then, I need a more exciting animated movie adventure, so how about we drop in to the next 2024 Animated Movies Rundown and even if the next Rundown is also not great, at least it’s more tolerable. I will see you on the next animated movie adventure and until then… The cold brew hits.
Blaziker’s Hot Sauce Rating
