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Old 3rd April 2018, 12:48 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2009
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ISLE OF DOGS

Wes Anderson has made a career of films which are very difficult to pigeonhole and probably fit into the 'Marmite' category. This ticks many of the boxes which you would make for one of his films: funny, quirky, offbeat, 'family' as a theme, an exaggerated/unusual reality, features (in voice form) a star-studded cast, and incredibly detailed. It's something I don't want to describe too much because to do so would be to spoil it for those who haven't seen it, but the trailer gives you a certain idea of what to expect, with the events taking place 20 years in the future and in Japan where a canine disease has left all dogs with a horrible illness and with an ambitious politician, Mayor Kobayashi, banishing them to (the appropriately named) Trash Island.

I've yet to see a Wes Anderson film I don't like, though The Darjeeling Limited took a couple of viewings before I grew to love it, and this story by Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Kunichi Nomura, with Anderson writing the screenplay, is animated in the same way as Fantastic Mr. Fox, and is clearly influenced by Japanese cinema, particularly Kurosawa, in some of the framing and use of captions and subtitles. It's not a film which is consistently laugh out loud funny – I probably did so three times – but one which you're more likely to smile at the jokes (both sight gags and verbal jokes, plus those with names) because you 'get' them, so it is entertaining but not hilarious. I hope that makes sense. If not, I'll put it this way: it's a film I liked a great deal, the children in the cinema were never restless and required throughout. I anticipate buying this and watching it quite frequently at home, though whether I'll see it again the cinema depends on work commitments and showtimes.

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