Netflix makes a great deal of slop and much of that slosh comes from the soppy stories they tell. Dog Gone may be a true story but it is also a dull one. Plain assessments of the father and son bond are all too reliant on a dog going missing in action, an emotional worry scored by music straight from the cutting room floor of The Sims 3. An awful film like this plays on the word doggone, a word that states an annoyance hinted at in the title but preserves in its opening moments. Leading man Fielding Marshall (Johnny Berchtold) cannot eat because he is so alone. Cheesy dialogue and a terrible pace bring about an Americanised horror show that suffocates the love for man’s best friend.
Immediately and consistently, Stephen Herek’s direction showcases that he has never quite removed himself from the hopes of working with pups again. 101 Dalmations clearly left an impression. But it never left a solid core of respect for animals behind. One of the very first interactions is both Marshall and the horribly difficult Nate (Nick Peine) being urinated on by a dog that the former believes will solve his self-pronounced loneliness. Dog Gone struggles with the simplicity of the task at hand and Americanises the normal statement of life. Pups are used as a magnet for attention rather than cared for. Take it straight to the red cup cliché party. Dog Gone fails to bridge that gap between using vaguely cute dogs for attention and caring when it goes missing.
Back when those adverts of “a dog is for life, not just for Christmas,” were released, it was hard to envisage Dog Gone going below the belt and updating it. “A dog is for parties and pulling, not for anything else,” appears to be the message of Dog Gone. Rob Lowe also features. Never forget that. An absolute disconnect between the real world and the plot of this feature, the interactions between characters, mean that Dog Gone, whatever true message it has, is useless. Lowe plays a whiny father figure that at first does not understand the wonders of pet ownership but soon comes good as it appears to be the only way to make good on a dwindling relationship with his son. Kimberly Williams-Paisley also appears, making her quadruple bill of Christmas features feel frankly exciting.
Closer to a Bible study parable movie than it is an actual movie of quality, Dog Gone is not real. Surely not. Netflix has provided their first act of psyop warfare and enlisted Lowe to the frontlines. Dog Gone cannot be real. Characters that feel pinched from the annals of graceless stereotypes, planted firmly in this film to annoy the self-proclaimed philosophy buffs and the tie-dye t-shirt wearers who cannot catch a break. When encountering a character in the woods during a search for a dog whose name audiences will struggle to remember, it is always wise to not listen to them if they have doughnuts strapped to themselves. Dog Gone is a waste that uses the cute little animal at the core of it for the same reasons the cheesy, ineffectively written lead does. Attention. A hallmark movie that gives idiots a run for their money as they decide whether to swoon for Lowe or cry for the dog.
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