Arthur the King

Last week, Arthur the King, a new feel-good dog movie, was released in theaters. Arthur the King follows an adventure racer and his team as they adopt a stray dog halfway through their race. I didn't have super high expectations for this film. I was expecting a typical feel-good dog movie This was also the first movie of the year that Sarah saw with me which made for a fun date night.

This movie was pretty much what I expected. It didn't surprise me nor did it disappoint me. It is just another addition to the dog movie genre. While it is nothing new, this movie did do its job very well. It tries to be this feel-good inspirational story and that's what it achieves. It has the emotional highs and lows that all inspirational stories have and makes you feel good by the time the credits roll around. Unsurprisingly, this movie is pretty emotional at parts. Sarah cried three times in the movie. Several scenes get you roped into the action and make you feel exactly what the movie wants you to. Of course, the dog is great in the movie. He is cute and likable and causes you to be invested enough that you want to see him make it through to the end of the movie. I also quite enjoyed the adventure race aspect of the movie. It was fun to see this team go through all of these stages of the race and do all these physical challenges. Even without the dog, I think this whole adventure race premise would have made for a decent movie. I also liked how the movie had this loyalty theme to it. Of course, the dog is very loyal as it is just in their nature but you also get to see this loyalty transfer into the human characters and see them change a bit.

There wasn't a lot I really disliked about this movie but by no means is it an amazing movie. I felt that the movie was a bit clunky at times. There are three distinct sections of the movie and you can feel pretty hard where each section begins and ends. I also felt that there were some unnatural additions of exposition in the film where a character issue is just kind of randomly thrown into the scene instead of organically added in. I also felt that the movie was about 15 minutes too long. It essentially goes through the same emotional moment twice which I feel could been just as effective by just resolving the film after the first emotional moment. Finally, I felt the movie took a little too long to bring in the dog. For being a dog-centered movie, the dog doesn't actually join the team until about an hour into the movie. He really needed to be incorporated into the movie sooner.

In the end, this was a decent enough feel-good dog story. The movie isn't trying to do anything new. It just wants to be an inspirational movie about an adventure team and their dog and that is what it achieves.

Score: 7/10 Grade: B Recommendation: If you liked the trailer, you'll like the movie.

Sarah's Score: 4.5/5 dogs