The Call of the Wild (2020) | Film Review

Jack London’s short novel, “The Call of the Wild”, is one of the first books I can remember reading as a child. A blistering adventure, the story follows a rambunctious dog named Buck as he is stolen from his family in California and sold into bondage as a sled dog in Alaska. Buck drifts from one crisis to the next, surviving multiple masters before finding one he truly loves and appreciates him equally, only then to find his true calling…in the wild. It is a beautiful tale of maturity and ascension, of determination and grit, and learning to survive on your own by listening to your own inner voice.

Flash forward to 2020, and now The Call of the Wild is a feature-length film starring Harrison Ford and a CGI Buck. That’s right. Director Chris Sanders and the team behind this attempt at wholesome family entertainment decided to take the central character of Buck – paramount to everything that happens on screen – and visualize him digitally instead of utilizing animal actors here and there.

This would be a magical endeavor if Sanders had even a hint of that technology used in The Lion King. And with a budget over $100 million, they should have at least been able to steal a few samples. Instead, I’m pretty sure every digitized animal here (which happens to be every animal you see) was produced using the newest version of The Scorpion King code. Ok, maybe it’s not that bad, but it is horrendously distracting with CGI failing to match even the light or shadow motifs at play. Nothing blends and there is not a single scene where Buck appears to be a true-to-life, living and breathing animal. Not one.

We can believe Harrison Ford’s John is a grumpy frontiersman, because he is. In fact, I’m convinced they just filmed Ford on a personal camping trip. We can believe the Alaskan wilderness is beautiful and frigid, because it is. What we cannot believe is Buck, because he isn’t real and it is blatantly obvious that Buck was stolen from a better Disney movie that never got made back in 2005. There are several moments when Ford is talking directly to Buck and it seems painfully self-evident that Indy is yapping at a grown man walking around in a green motion-capture suit on all fours. Good work if you can get it and you’re into playing poodles, sure, but it doesn’t exactly sell the illusion necessary to make this film soar.

Make no mistake, this film could soar. Even with special effects whipped up in my grandmother’s garage, there are plenty of solid performances from Harrison Ford as Buck’s soul master (a truly heartfelt and ultimately wasted performance), as well as Omar Sy and Cara Gee as loving sled team owners. Frankly, the only misstep performance-wise is surprisingly Dan Stevens’ turn as the villainous Hal, a rampaging loon who enters every scene bitchier than the one before it, and whom seems to exist solely in an effort to annoy every single person within earshot of his vicious numbskullery. Like you and I.

Even on occasion, you will start to grow used to the CGI – though you never buy into it, an important distinction – and you feel for the animals as they embark on dangerous crusades for the sheer whim of man. Buck will even begin to grow on you, once you allow your mind to ignore the obvious and use your imagination to fill in the gaps. There are several scenes where Buck’s antics, courageousness, and sheer will to survive are THIS close to powerful, moving moments. The potential was here.

What I am saying is that Chris Sanders and his team COULD have delivered the definitive adaptation of an absolute classic. A call to the beast that rages in all of our hearts, longing to be free of our personal bindings and howl at the moon whenever the mood strikes our fancy. Instead we are left with bad CGI and Snidely Whiplash. Simply put, this Call was lost.