This highly stylized stop-motion animation pushes the
limits of writer-director Wes Anderson's customary deadpan drollery, and the
dark, lonely world he creates as its backdrop is most definitely not for small
children. Feared as disease carriers, all dogs are banished from a Japanese
city by its formidable and corrupt mayor (voice of Kunichi Nomura) and exiled
to the aptly named Trash Island. There, surrounded by giant mountains of
garbage, they compete for rotten food scraps. When the mayor's 12-year-old
orphaned ward (voice of Koyu Rankin) arrives, searching for his deported pet
(voice of Liev Schreiber), he's aided in his poignant quest by a quartet of
other formerly pampered pooches (voices of Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob
Balaban and Jeff Goldblum) and by the street mutt (voice of Bryan Cranston)
with whom they have allied themselves in their struggle for survival.
Well-grounded older teens can probably handle this weighty, grim fable that
ultimately finds the animals threatened with mass extermination.
Watch out for: Mature
themes and images, fleeting surgical gore and a single instance of rough language.
Rated: A-II, adults and adolescents; MPAA: PG-13
© Arlington Catholic Herald 2018