Arctic Dogs (also known as Arctic Justice internationally and as Polar Squad in the UK) is a 2019 computer-animated comedy film co-written and directed by Aaron Woodley and co-directed by Dimos Vrysellas. It was released on November 1, 2019 by Entertainment Studios in Canada and the United States, and not only received negative reviews, but received only $3.1 million against its $50 million budget. The film was released directly to Netflix in Latin America, Germany and France.
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 It's like that movie made a poopsie!
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Plot
Swifty the Arctic fox discovers a devious plan by Otto Von Walrus to drill beneath the Arctic surface to unleash enough gas to melt all the ice. With help from his friends -- an introverted polar bear, a scatterbrained albatross, a crafty fox, and two paranoid otters -- Swifty and the gang spring into action to foil Otto's plot and save the day.
Why The Cold Brew Doesn't Hit
- The story is very cliched and predictable, as the whole "outcast who doesn't belong" premise has already been done before in lots of other better films. And it feels like it took too much of it's main plot for the movie Balto. As Balto is about has a half-dog half-wolf who lives with his adoptive family (consisting of a goose and pair of polar bears) in Alaska and is despised by humans and dogs alike. But is later hailed as a hero after assisting a group of lost sled dogs in delivering a supply of anti-toxin to the town after it starts suffering from a Diphtheria epidemic which leads to him being accepted by society. And this film on the other hand has a dog who lives in the arctic and wants more out of life by being accepted into a social status that is considered "cool" by his society and later reaches said status by saving the arctic from being destroyed by scheming villains. Sound familiar?
- The animation, while look a little bit better than Assemblage Entertainment's previous film, it also can be bland since the backgrounds feel pretty artificial with little more than the typical "town", "arctic", "villain's lair". settings being pretty much the only ones present in the entirety of the movie's runtime, not to mention the tremendous amount of snow and ice present in said backgrounds. Not to mention that, while they aren't very noticeable unless you look very closely and don't come up frequently, they are moments in the film that actually have visible glitches in the animation, which is very unexceptionable for 2019 standereds.
- But also, unlike films like Fantastic Mr. Fox or Zootopia, it doesn't do anything new or interesting with the concept of talking animals with human features. And they're just stereotypical talking animals who walk on two feet and wear clothes just like every other piece of media dedicated to animals acting like people, so in a similar manner to Shark Tale and Fish Hooks, you can replace Swifty and the rest of the characters with human cast and the film would be largely the same.
- All the characters are just annoying, few charismatic and one-dimensional like:
- Swifty is the generic protagonist who wants more out of life and wants to be at the top of society other than simply working at his job that he sees as mundane and boring. This isn't helped by the fact that not only is the trope itself cliched like heck, but Swifty's actual motivation in it of itself it also insanely dumb. He wants to become a UPS driver. That's it. He wants to be known for delivering packages and not just seen as an average person by those around him. Not to mention how his passion to get more out of life doesn't feel like true ambition but rather like arrogance and overconfidence (which also leads to him making stupid decisions out of not thinking his actions through), making him an unpleasant and unlikable protagonist of top of already being cliched.
- PB is the big and large best friend who serves as the pessimistic foil to the protagonist's more outgoing and reckless nature. And the trope he plays as the best friend who's the polar opposite of the main character has already been done before and better in films like Shrek and Meet the Robinsons, and continues to be done much better with movies like Soul.
- Jade is the love interest who also serves as the movie's "strong female character" and voice of reason to the rest of the cast. And romance between her and Swifty is incredibly forced and underdeveloped.
- Lemmy's almost entire personality revolves around him being stupid.
- Magda is the short-tempered and strict boss of the protagonist.
- Leopold and Bertha, a pair of French conspiracy theorist otters, are extremely annoying and pointless to the main plot of the film.
- Otto Van Walrus is a blatant rip-off of Mr. Waternoose from Monsters, Inc., as he's a twist villain who deceives the heroes in order to pull off his plan, and relies on mechanical spider legs to get around, similar to the Pixar villain.
- Otto's army of puffins are not just unfunny comic reliefs, but they're also blatant rip-offs of the minions from Despicable Me. Something which has already been done before by the same studio with Norm of the North. And if they didn't dognap the delivery dogs earlier, they and Otto could've easily won.
- There are many moments in which the film can get surprisingly mean-spirited and unpleasant, such as the scene were PB gets angry and outright calls off Swifty thinking that he's an idiot for thinking that Otto Van Walrus is planing something evil, and the second is in Otto Van Walrus' backstory were, after Magda turns down Otto Van Walrus' idea to use gas as to transport the mail, throws a MASSIVE temper tantrum and throws his board out the window, which cause him to get kicked out of the ABDS by Magda.
- It is one of those films where the only selling point is the fact that lots of celebs are in the voice cast in an attempt to attract people to the movie.
- In a very similar vain to Ivan The Incredible, Justin and the Knights of Valour and the 2017 Woody Woodpecker film(all three of which came out 7, 6 and two years earlier respectively), the Marketing of Arctic Dogs was very poor when compared to many other films that were released before this, since a lot of people were actually unaware of the movie's existence, which may explain why this movie bombed at the box office. There were even trailers for Arctic Dogs and yet lot of people were still unaware of the movie's existence.
- There are noticeable plot-holes in this film that are never explained:
- Why is it that Dogs are the only ones who can pull the Sleds?
- Otto Von Walrus' plan is to drill beneath the Arctic surface to unleash enough gas to melt all the ice and make a machines to deliver Mail faster, which in terms will also destroy his home.
- After the climax, its reviled that the Puffins can speck, but why don't the Puffins speck at any point in the film in the first place?
- Terrible comedy with lots of dated references.
- As it turns out, this movie was written by people behind such films as Escape from Planet Earth, Spark: A Space Tail (which is directed by the same director), and The Nut Job, which means this film shares the same problems as said films. Not to mention, the timing seems extremely off, as they try to make comedy by using poor cartoonish reactionary shots.
- The final counters between the main characters and Otto Von Walrus is very boring. As there's some camera shots aimed at the characters during the chase scenes. It's also a rip-off of other climax's from much better films such as The Lion King, [The Hunchback of Notre Dame|The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)] and so much more, as it is a typical "villain takes over city and everyone must work together to stop him/her".
- Forced messages about global warming in the form of the villain's plan to destroy the arctic. It isn't helped by the fact that this message feels forced down the audience's throat.
- Like Alpha and Omega, the film tries to portray hollow logs as good material to make sleds out of. When in reality, they're not.
- Misleading Title: Despite being called Arctic Dogs, they aren't actually the main characters of the film. As while, yes, Swifty and Jade are foxes, the rest of the cast is made up of various different arctic animals (PB is a polar bear, Magda is a caribou, Lemmy is an albatross, etc.). And dogs that generally do come to mind when the subject of "Arctic Dogs" is brought up like huskies don't appear once in the entirety of the film's runtime, not even as minor or background characters.
- "Center of Gravity", while very up-beat and catchy, is a very out-of-place end-credits song that does not fit with the esthetics of Arctic Dogs, sounding more like a song out of a Sports Film from the mid-2000s.
Redeeming Qualities
- The voice acting is pretty decent with both Jeremy Renner and Heidi Klum seems to be the only ones who cares about putting in the effort here, along with to an extent John Cleese and it's nice to hear his voice once again.
- As mentioned before, despise having some animation errors and generic backgrounds the animation is a improvement over the Norm of the North animation. As Assemblage Entertainment did a passable job animating the movie.
- There are a few good jokes sprinkle though out this film, such as the scene were the Puffins accused the one Puffin of knocking over the book cases.
- The idea of having an Arctic fox as a protagonist is a very great idea since they never used this kind of animal in a animated film, despise the bad execution.
- The character designs are cute, specially with young Swifty.
- The soundtrack is pretty entertaining to listen.
- The "All right, guys, that's it. We're outta here." line, said by the Puffin Leader(with his voiced provided by Aaron Woodley) is a cute and funny line.
Reception
Box office
In the United States and Canada, Arctic Dogs was released alongside Harriet, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Motherless Brooklyn, and was projected to gross $5–10 million from 2,835 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $700,000 on its first day, and ended up debuting to just $2.9 million ($47 million was lost), finishing 10th and marking the worst opening of all-time for a film playing in over 2,800 theaters.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 13% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 28 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 64% and a 41% "definite recommend".
Accolades
Despite negative reviews, it received a Canadian Cinema Editors Awards nomination for Best Editing in Animation.
Animated series and spin-off films
A web series set after the events of the film titled Arctic Friends was released in September 2020 on both Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video, consisting of 40 collections (160 shorts). Another spin-off series titled Puffins was also released, featuring the voice of Johnny Depp as Johnny Puff. A spin-off of Puffins, entitled Puffins Impossible, was released in April 2022, with Depp reprising his role as Puff. There are also two Christmas live action/animation spin-off films titled Christmas Thieves (2021) and The Good Witch of Christmas (2022) Spin-off animated films.
- Arctic Friends: In Search of the Arctic Idol
- Arctic Friends: Swifty
- Arctic Friends: The Magic Portal
- Johnny Puff: Secret Mission
- Mini Puffins
- Puffins: The Walrus Who Wanted Too Much
- Puffins: A Stellar Adventure
- Puffins: Arctic Games
- Baby Puffins & Bunny
- Robo Puffin
Trivia
- The film's advertising tagline "When that cold brew hits" got some memetic mutation.
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