'A Dog's Way Home' A Review

A Dog's Way Home is a family adventure movie about a pit bull mix Bella(voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard) in Denver raised in a dilapidated shack by a cat, adopted by a neighbor boy Lucas(Jonah Hauer-King) and his veteran mom Terri(Ashley Judd), then fostered by a family friend in New Mexico due to the Denver pit bull ban. As Lucas goes to pick up Bella after moving to Golden Bella jumps the fence and begins the 400 mile trek back home. She wanders for two years having adventures until finally reuniting with Lucas.

There's nothing much to distinguished the cast of this relatively unambitious feel-good movie save for the inclusion of an incongruous amount of legendary actors- Ashley Judd, Wes Studi, and Edward James Olmos. Their parts are particularly demanding and the other actors, Hauer-King most egregiously, can't really compete. But it is an odd, serviceable cast on the whole.

The tone of the movie is somewhat bizarre, a mash of squish Hallmark feelings with some exceedingly morbid/disturbing moments not to mention the repeated, poorly rendered CGI animals. The rollercoster of borderline illogical plot the story goes through in order to set the dog on her way home is a little tiresome. But ultimately the movie succeeds as an entertaining, mostly thoughtless, piece of fluff like diet Homeward Bound.

Stream It.