"Isle of Dogs" Review
I recommend reading Angie Han's article on the troubling sociopolitical aspects concerning the film's use of the Japanese culture on Mashable "Why is Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' set in Japan? We're not sure either." and encourage others to do their own research on the matter. As a non-Japanese person, I think the movie seems and feels tone deaf by intentionally alienating its Japanese characters and refusing to provide subtitles for most of their dialogue and by having English interpreters speak over the Japanese dialogue and muffling the audio of the Japanese actors. This is weird and very uncomfortable. Maybe it's intended to be a metaphor for Japanese internment camps but there isn't enough evidence in the text that would clearly suggest that in my opinion. Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to set this movie in a dystopian Japan.
The movie itself is very disappointing. Viewers who've stuck with Wes Anderson's filmography for any amount of time will quickly grasp the style of his stories. A Wes Anderson movie usually follows disillusioned youth set to folk-y music ornamented by extremely photogenic and symmetrical camera work and has with a lot of slick monotone dialogue delivery. This is Wes Anderson's shit and he's hellbent on sticking with that style through thick and thin. Although stop-motion animation brings a lot of irresistible charm to its setting and characters (think Fantastic Mr. Fox), the movie is stacked high with terribly delivered monotonous exposition of literally what the character is doing in the moment/how they feel/and what they plan to do. There's no mystery and it feels like the script is bending over backwards doing its damnest to make its audience not feel like total dumb asses. One particularly offensive moment is a scene in which the dog, Chief (played brilliantly by Bryan Cranston) explains his backstory. We expect the movie to cut to a flashback (since it's been doing that a lot anyway) and we could've gotten the conflict in his character through his past by showing us his story. Instead, the film stays focused on a single shot of a dog explaining his backstory to us. This is lazy writing and lazy film making. There are a lot of scenes like these and they just keep coming.
The script also had trouble juggling its characters. In the main pack, we know about the Bryan Cranston dog, the Edward Norton dog, and the Liev Schreiber dog. The rest of them are simple quirky looking props that offer nothing to the plot. The movie has a talented cast and if it were a live action movie, it probably would've worked. But for the most part the voice acting was dull and uninspiring to sit through with the exception of Bryan Cranston, Harvey Keitel as the leader of the other dog pack, and Greta Gerwig as the white-saviour character. Also Tilda Swinton is in this and the reveal of their character is simply perfect.
There are some things I liked a lot. Alexandre Desplat's score is, as usual, fantastic. He effortlessly combines traditional Japanese instruments with his usual modern western classical style. It's fun to listen to and it works very well in the movie. I also love the animation. Everything just looks amazing and characters move with a lot of nuance. There's a sushi prep scene near the middle of the movie and it looks gorgeous.
Besides its insanely beautiful visuals, Desplat's score, and standout performances from Bryan Cranston, Greta Gerwig, and Harvey Keitel, Isle of Dogs is a simple story that's somehow told in the most boring way possible. Plagued with terrible exposition, underwhelming dialogue, mediocre pacing, and a problematic representation of Japanese people, I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone, not even to the most loyal of Wes Anderson fans.