Director: Alexandre Espigares
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 2.5
Animated version of the classic Jack London young adult novel about wolfdog White Fang as he goes from being protected by his mother to accompanying a Native American named Grey Beaver selling gloves to buy land to a scummy dog fighter (voiced by Paul Giamatti) to, finally, upstanding lawman Weedon Scott (Nick Offerman) and his wife. I have to admit the book was one of my favorites as a child - along with The Phantom Tollbooth and The Story of Doctor Dolittle and The Cricket in Times Square, to name a few - so I'll always be taken by the story of an almost-human-like pup learning how to survive (and who to trust) and about the need to respect nature (in all its cruelty), but the animation is only so-so: Espigares and his team do a fine job animating the various animals, lending them realistic movement, but the humans look like they were pulled out of a Playstation 2 game, washed out and a little herky-jerky (the backgrounds are generally striking). At the very least, the director and crew didn't give the animals any dialogue: that would have been a very Dreamworks thing to do.
