Dog Gone Movie Review: The Extraordinary Journey of Gonker On Netflix
Cast: Rob Lowe, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Johnny Berchtold, Susan Gallagher, Soji Arai, Annabella Didion, Nick Peine, Mezi Atwood, Robert Bryan Davis, Bruce Busta Soscia, Brian Brightman, Rachael Thompson
Director: Stephen Herek
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Dog Gone is one of those heart-warming films that are good to see occasionally. Available from January 13 on Netflix (one of the most interesting releases arriving on Netflix in January 2023), the film by Stephen Herek is aimed at families, but also at those who love animals and has had a furbaby in his life to devote body and soul to. Furthermore, the personal problems that afflict Fielding, the protagonist, including the conflictual relationship with his father, are further food for thought that the film uses to deal with current and never trivial issues such as the search for oneself and one’s place in the world.
Dog Gone is based on true events, to be precise, it is the film adaptation of the novel by Pauls Toutonghi, in reality, the husband of Peyton Marshall, Fielding’s sister. He heard from the Marshall family about their ordeal in the late 1990s when their dog, a honey-colored golden retriever, went missing in the Appalachians. The animal was suffering from Addison’s disease and needed a special injection every thirty days. It was finally found after fifteen days of exhausting searches. Toutonghi was so fascinated by the story that he decided to publish it as a novel, to spread it to the whole world.
Dog Gone Movie Review: Story Plot
Fielding Marshall is a boy who is preparing to leap into the world of adults. He is about to graduate and leave university but hasn’t found his way yet and is confused about the goal to pursue, while his friends are already on their way to the world of work. To the personal frustrations are added the judgments of the family, in particular of the father, who never fails to show embarrassment for a son he considers “lost”. During the last days on campus when even the girl leaves him, Fielding decides to adopt a dog that he will call Gonker. After graduation he will return home with the dog and, after the first complaints from his parents, Gonker will become part of the family. One day, during a walk in the Appalachians, Gonker wanders off and never comes back. He will begin a race against time to find it because the animal suffers from Addison’s disease and needs an injection every thirty days. Only twenty remain before the next dose of the drug.
Fielding decides to adopt Gonker at a moment of particular suffering in his life. When everyone around him doesn’t seem to accept him for who he is, they don’t seem to give him time, to find someone who loves him for his strengths and the thousand defects he possesses, or at least those that society leads us to think are defects. The loss of Gonker, the fear of never finding him again and the possibility that he will die due to lack of treatment, unleash in him a spirit of enterprise that has certainly remained latent for many years as well as the skills that will help him face the days of research.
It matters little if the friend in question has four legs and is covered in hair, because the desire to find him will help him bring out his true personality, his being, and the parents can’t help but notice that their son is not the loser they’d always thought he was. The journey in search of the animal is moving, anyone who has or has had an animal by their side cannot help but shed a few tears in front of this simple and sincere story, above all because the whole nation will be touched by this story and in a one way or another, through social media or traditional mass media, they will want to give their contribution.
Dog Gone Movie Review and Analysis
The relationship between Fielding and his father John has great space and relevance in the plot of the film. Gonker’s search will become the key to a road trip along the streets of Virginia, a narrative device that will serve to start a confrontation between the two hitherto postponed. The title of the film places the dog at the center, but at a certain point, his role becomes almost marginal, at least in our eyes, because he hovers like a shadow over the life of the boy and his family. John, like any parent, is very worried about his son and this translates into embarrassment in front of friends, frustration and small squabbles with his wife. It will take time for the two to find a meeting point from which to start again, but they will succeed, on the other hand, car trips to the cinema have always been revealing and healing. The mother character also has something to say.
In her past, there was a trauma never overcome, a sense of guilt for not having looked after her dog, and anger towards the parents who didn’t want to know about the dog. The loss of Gonker will make all this re-emerge and the suffering will serve to exorcise what happened and to forgive oneself, to officially welcome the new animal into his heart. Dog Gone, except for flashbacks that concern Fielding’s mother’s past, follows a very linear rhythm and narrative. It does its duty as a family film and the cast also seems to feel this issue very closely – the images in the end credits demonstrate this – and the performances are very real. Perfectly packaged to entertain young and old, Stephen Herek’s film could start today, and be one of the best cinematic tips to give to those who love animals and beyond, because even those who feel a bit like Fielding and every day, he looks for his way rowing against the tide he will be able to find comfort.
By modifying some parts from the original version narrated by Toutonghi, the drama rewritten by Nick Santora would appear to be a classic tale suitable for everyone about a dog’s momentary disappearance and its discovery, whose only goal is to pay homage to the privileged relationship between the canine world and the human one and their deep bond that is established over the years. Dog Gone is exactly all of this: predictable, strictly emotional, a cliché. But its obvious plot supports aspects that are anything but trivial, such as a parent’s acceptance of the bankruptcy fragility of a child and of a physical and psychological malaise that has remained latent and potentially fatal for a long time.
In fact, behind his feel-good movie features built on the reckless decision to adopt a dog of a twenty-one-year-old student who has just left, graduated with no prospects and has returned to his parent’s home to ponder a choice about the future that is slow to appear, space is made, advancing in parallel, a coming of age of responsibility and adherence to adulthood which gives the film directed by Stephen Herek an added value, capable, due to the clarity with which it is portrayed to us, or perhaps speaking to some ‘lost’ young man whom he could feel included in the arduous symbolic journey that he sees reflected in Fielding’s character.
The loss of Gonker due to an unforgivable levity of his master, and the task force that is mobilized to find him inside and beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood, involving the press, animal rights associations and four-legged lovers, enhances values dear to American domestic cinema such as cooperation and support from local authorities, traces themes that support the most important relational nucleus of the story: that between the solid and concrete father John (Rob Lowe) and his son who is still undecided about whom he would like to be, played with surprising skill by an actor (rather active on TikTok) Johnny Berchtold. The road trip on the Appalachian Mountains is theirs, a metaphor for the meeting/reconciliation that will take place in the finale between Gonker and Fielding, built on journeys on foot, open-faced speeches, overnight stays here and there and protracted and long-hidden suffering from the young protagonist who adds a rather unexpected dark and bitter taste.
Dog Gone Movie Review: The Last Words
Dog Gone is a very good family film, suitable for young and old. Being based on a true story makes the story of this family even more heartfelt, they will do everything to find their dog, lost in the mountains. Simple and direct, he also uses the role of the animal within the family to investigate the father-son relationship and the personal frustrations of a young man just entering adult life. Touching and sincere without cloying.
