The Dog Stars

Hig (Jacob Elordi) bonds with Cima (Margaret Qualley) in The Dog Stars (Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

The Dog Stars is a meditative post-apocalyptic journey toward hope after grief. It is very slow paced, punctuated by moments of surprisingly bloody violence. It is a strange movie that is far more interested in quiet contemplation than it is in drama or suspense. Or character building. Or world building. The performances are fine, but it has nothing new to add to the genre or its themes. It is boring, circling the same ideas repeatedly. It finally lands on something different in its final act, before speeding through it to get back to its protagonist staring off into the distance.

Ridley Scott doesn’t always make great movies, however, he usually doesn’t make dull ones. The only one I can think of less engaging than this is Napoleon. That is not company you want to be mentioned in.

Hig is a nice guy living in a dead world. There was some kind of virus that decimated the population. Now people are scattered all over, trying to survive. Hig flies in a small plane with his beloved dog, Jasper, looking for supplies and doing recon for his friend, Bangley. One day, he decides there has to be something more out there and sets off in search of civilization. What he finds makes him believe in life again.

The Dog Stars (112 minutes, without the end credits) is based on the 2012 novel by Peter Heller. From what I can tell, the screenplay, by Mark L. Smith (also responsible for the travesty that was The Boys in the Boat), keeps the central concept/characters and punches it up with a lot more action. The enemies seem to be much more colorful, yet there is so little to them that they stick out awkwardly in an otherwise introspective story.

It is an odd choice that doesn’t work because those scenes don’t add much to Hig’s thoughts or influence his decisions. They are just things that happen. This isn’t really a “series of vignettes” type of movie, creating an imbalance it can’t recover from. One minute, there is a tender conversation about what things where like before, the next, Bangley is getting attacked by a pack of crazy, tattooed guys. These two aspects never resolve themselves to sit comfortably together.

Jacob Elordi gives a solid performance as Hig, a guy who wants to be trusting and needs to have a purpose following the death of his wife. Bangley is played by Josh Brolin in the Josh Brolin role: reluctant mentor who is a wise and angry smartass. Though he is always welcome, he could do this in his sleep. Margaret Qualley is sweet and grounding as Cima, a woman Hig meets unexpectedly and falls for. Guy Pearce is her protective father, a bland part he handles as well as possible.

The performers are all good, especially considering how thin and directionless the characters are. Scott just sits with them in their sadness/anger/hopelessness, doing nothing with those feelings. The Dog Stars wants to be meaningful and exciting summer entertainment. It is neither. It isn’t even a mess. It is a little weird, but mostly a slog. There is a reason the studio barely promoted it. Audiences should pay as much attention to it as they did.

1½ out of 5

Cast:

Jacob Elordi as Hig

Margaret Qualley as Cima

Josh Brolin as Bangley

Guy Pearce as Pops

Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by Mark L. Smith