The Call Of The Wild

CGI can be great. The liquid metal killer from Terminator 2. The folding cities of Inception.The Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park. Davy Jones from The POTC movies. Paddington. The ruined Las Vegas vista from Blade Runner 2049. Groot from The Avengers. Everything from The Force Awakens. What it hasn't been able to replicate yet are the living breathing people and animals we see every day. There's always something sightly off about them and Buck the leading good boy from The Call Of The Wild is no exception. But when you see the hardships he faces throughout the film you'll be glad he's made of ones and zeros.

In the latter part of the 19th century in an opulent Californian house lived a big St Bernard/Collie mix called Buck. Buck had the run of the town being the property of a judge and was loving life until the night he got stolen and taken to the Yukon in Canada, a place where strong dogs were always in demand to work in the gruelling gold rush conditions. Taken from a carefree lifestyle and forced to exist in the harshest conditions on Earth put Buck in touch with a part of himself domesticity had long since buried.

Yes, a CGI dog is hard to take seriously but if you can put this aside (a tough call for many, more on that later) and go with the flow, The Call Of The Wild is a solid piece of old fashioned entertainment. Funny in places, exciting, filled with glorious vistas, tense enough to put the smallies on edge but never even to traumatise them. The rougher edges of Jack London's famous story have been smoothed off (the fate of most dogs up there is conveniently ignored) there's still plenty here to convey the harshness of that snowy life. Two heartfelt turns from Omar Sy as the sleigh riding postman and a craggy looking Harrison Ford as a man running from tragedy keep things grounded when the story verges on the silly side but this film is all about the Woof. Buck is a lovely fella, mad to please but a fella who marches by the beat of his own drum. Seeing him slowly breaking free from human bondage will make you look wistfully at your own dog and ensure you never deign to dress them up again. Because that.....it's just wrong.

A few years back Disney made the decision to stop using animals in it's productions and go the all CGI route. In theory it's an admirable decision and one that lets audiences enjoy animal endangering thrills guilt free but technology and morality aren't quite on a level pegging just yet. On rare occasions you'll forget that the animals onscreen aren't real and you'll marvel at the action unfurling before you, a close encounter with a wolfpack or an escape from an avalanche but when Buck's in close up and you can see just how artificial he is the spell of the movie is broken fast. Some people will be able to get past that but many won't I feel, especially when Buck pulls off a wrestling move on a pack rival. Yeah, that really happens. A silly decision.

For what is a children's film there's some surprisingly weighty themes laid on throughout the story. Humanity's brutality towards animals, behaviour that makes us more primitive than they are. Just how close to the edge of civilisation people live and how it doesn't take much at all to push us towards a vicious existence. The whole nature vs nurture debate with Buck torn between how he was brought up and what he actually is gives us plenty of food for thought but (sorry to keep going back to this) everything is tempered by Buck's artificiality. The film's heart is in the right place though and that alongside it's sense of adventure means this one is going to become a fixture on holiday tv in years to come.

In cinemas now everywhere.