Jonah Naplan   March 15, 2024

Dog movies are instant empathy machines. That’s why films like “Marley & Me,” “Old Yeller” and the “Dog’s Purpose” franchise have audience members weeping at their feet when they’re over. It’s for good reason, of course. We all love our dogs, and wish they could stay with us forever, but know that we’d best keep our hopes up to see them stick around for fifteen years or so if we’re lucky. Movies about our furry friends are usually fine enough; cute diversions that are ultimately harmless and appropriate entertainments for the kiddos, too. But what they so often lack is an emotional complexity beyond the stilted simulacrum that has long defined these types of movies ever since they first appeared on silver screens. 

“Arthur the King,” the latest entry in a long lineage of canine flicks that all seem to be bound together by blood has the same shopworn formula written in its veins: Human is troubled and searching for redemption. Enter dog. The two lost souls go on a physical as well as emotional journey together to find themselves. The dog develops some sickness and appears to lie on their deathbed as the human weeps over the body, realizing how important this creature really is. Now, here comes an important artistic choice on the screenwriter’s part. They can (1) let the dog pass away, and leave the viewer with tears of bitterness, or (2) have the film’s characters spiritually will the dog back to health either by prayer (if the film is faith-based) or by whispering motivational phrases into their furry ear like “you can do it” and “I know you can push through this.” Works as dandy as cough syrup.

Screenwriter Michael Brandt decided to go with the latter option—this is not a spoiler; “Arthur” is based on a real life dog who did not in fact die in the story on which this film is based—and the movie is all the better for it, because if he hadn’t, “Arthur the King” would probably develop a cult phenomena that it really doesn’t deserve, especially considering how deeply forgettable the whole thing is. (Having seen it in an empty theater this morning, I’ve already sort of forgotten that it exists, despite its remarkable prominence by means of ubiquitous trailers and other promotional material).

The film follows the journey of adventure racer Michael Light (Mark Wahlberg, who is also a producer on the film and new spokesperson for the Arthur Foundation, which helps ailing dogs around the world), and his team of like-minded athletes who embark on a treacherous, five-day journey racing against dozens of other teams across dangerous terrains—mountains, jungles, the sea—to achieve the title of world champion. His fellow teammates—Chick (Ali Suliman), who’s recovering from a bad knee injury, Leo (Simu Liu), an Instagram star who’s still angry with Michael over their tumultuous loss three years prior, and Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who’s competing in honor of her dying father—are all interesting think pieces in and of themselves, but the light never shines their way, handing all the focus over to the troubled Michael and the neglected stray dog who used to camp out in a poor Dominican Republic neighborhood before somehow getting roped into the Adventure Team competition himself. Magically, as though he has wings, Arthur, as he’ll soon be named, manages to catch up with this motley crew on their adventure, somehow bypassing the several ziplines, swamps, and rocky hills the quartet braved.

Even by the end, it’s never actually explained how Arthur pulled it all off, but the film is less interested in exploring that question than it is in sticking to inspirational clichés that define “Arthur the King” as an underdog sports drama as much as a furry friend feature. Running at only a brief 90 minutes in length, the severe predictability of “Arthur the King” almost loops back around and doesn’t matter anymore because the movie dissipates from memory the second you leave the theater, exerting zero impact.

There is, however, an excellent scene on a zipline that, remarkably, stands among the most suspenseful sequences I’ve seen in modern movies, displaying an expert use of tension and smartly tapping into the universal fear of heights to make a point of the stakes and danger of the situation. It makes a lot more sense to look up that one great scene on YouTube in a couple of months than pay money out of your pocket to see the full movie in the theater, especially considering that you could easily ace a test on the plot of the film just by looking at the poster alone.

Yeah, the dog is pretty cute. And the spectacle of Marky Mark’s usual schtick colliding with the brazen but charming physicality of Simu Liu is engrossing, but only in short spurts and skips. So much of their camaraderie and the rest of the film feels overly mechanical, defeating the whole point of a dog movie which is inherently designed to wrench your heart out and devastate the senses in a way that’s raw and unyielding. The movie didn’t leave me wanting to hug my dog (though I do so anyway), and instead left me with nothing. If you ask me about “Arthur the King” next week, I’ll have already forgotten what you’re talking about.

Now playing in theaters.