If you've ever seen a Wes Anderson movie, then you know what I mean by that last part. Very few filmmakers working today have as highly stylized a signature as this director -- in all the good and bad ways you can take that. On the good side, you're going to get something you couldn't get anywhere else when you watch a Wes Anderson film. It's going to be supremely artistic, with each image methodically composed as a feast for the eyes. On the other hand, style will routinely swamp substance. And you won't feel that you've "never seen anything like it before"; you did, the last time you watched a Wes Anderson movie.
I find it particularly hard to decide just what I think of Isle of Dogs. Animation does actually seem like the perfect medium for Wes Anderson -- particularly this style, as developed previously for Fantastic Mr. Fox. You can actually see how it's "fussed over," with individual hairs moving between frames of the stop motion photography. Huge landscapes are created for outrageously wide shots, filled with details you'd have to freeze frame to ever notice. Equally extreme close-ups allow you to scrutinize every last detail of the figures created for the animation. It really is gorgeous.
Still, it can also be so damn "look at me, I'm quirky!" at times. And not always in service of the story. Not incidentally, this movie does actually have an intriguing story. I'd go back and forth between thinking Wes Anderson was the perfect person to tell it and pining for the more conventional version of the same tale.
The central conceit really shines as an Anderson film. We hear dogs speak English, while all the Japanese characters speak their native language (which is not subtitled much of the time). It makes for easy access to the dogs as characters, making their matter-of-fact behavior particularly funny in contrast to the strange inscrutability of the human characters.
On the other hand, the conceit is often used as a substitute for anything approaching actual character development in the film. The main dog, Chief, goes through a totally unmotivated transformation just because three-act structure demands it. Other dogs get running jokes that pass for character traits. (Not that it isn't funny every time Duke says he's "heard a rumor," but that is literally the extent of his personality.) The movie trades on the deep bench of Wes Anderson's recurring group of actors to generate attachment.
It is, as ever, a great cast, used here in a sort of meta typecasting. Edward Norton is direct and all business. Bill Murray is lazy and laconic. Jeff Goldblum is hyper and operating at a different energy from the rest. Scarlett Johansson is the one female of any consequence in a male-dominated cast. Tilda Swinton flits briefly in and out in a bizarre contrasting role. They're all doing "the thing they're known to do in all their movies." Bryan Cranston is a newcomer to the Anderson fold, but he's humorously trading on his image to some extent too. His character is a sort of Walter White in reverse -- all prickly menace and anger, softening throughout the story.
I did waffle back and forth between finding the movie endearing and just plain weird, but I'd say it was in at least a two-to-one ratio in favor of being won over. I couldn't help but think the movie was getting in its own way some of the time, but most of the time it felt like exactly what it needed to be. I was certainly entertained. I'd grade it a tenuous B+. If you liked Fantastic Mr. Fox, this is even better. If you're not so sure on Wes Anderson, you might want to steer clear -- though I do think this is one of his best that I've seen.
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