The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B-
I actually saw Arthur the King before Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire but I’ve been putting off reviewing it because, well, it’s fine. It isn’t great, it isn’t bad, it’s just fine. I mean it’s supposed to be an inspirational movie about a dog and it delivers on that promise. I doubt that I will ever watch it again and my memory of it is fading pretty quickly, but it does what it does well enough for 100 minutes or so. Look, I’m at a point in 2024 when I’m happy with a movie if it just doesn’t piss me off.
Mark Wahlberg stars as a washed-up adventure racer that wants one more chance at winning a championship and registers for a several hundred mile race through the Dominican Republic. If you’re like, me you have the following initial question: Is adventure racing a real thing? Yes, apparently it is. In fact, if you go to the website for the United States Adventure Racing Association right now, the first thing you will see is an FAQ page for people that just watched this movie and the first question is “Is adventure racing a real sport?” Anyway, Wahlberg assembles a team for the grueling race through jungles and mountains and goes for one more shot at adventure racing glory. If you are also wondering how such events manage to get insurance, I don’t have an answer for that one yet.
The plot is a pretty standard comeback/underdog story, albeit with a mighty obscure sport, but the plot moderately thickens when a dog keeps appearing on the path of our racing team. The characters are stunned that a dog is somehow following them over vast stretches of dangerous terrain and ultimately adopt him as an unofficial member of the team. I was also stunned since the movie never explains how the dog is able to follow them through certain areas and this is supposed to be based on a true story. But whatever. If I didn’t question a dog’s basketball skills in Air Bud then I guess I can’t start getting picky about this shit now.
Arthur the King can’t really seem to decide what it wants to be. It isn’t a comedy or an action movie, even though it has some jokes and action scenes. It is too family-friendly to be an extreme sports movie, yet it is too focused on extreme sports to really be a traditional family movie. I suppose that “family movie” is the label that I would use if I had to choose, but that is also underselling some legitimately good action sequences and stunt work. There are some questionable green screen shots, but, for the most part, the movie has some of the most physical, on-location stunts that you will see in a movie nowadays. There is one sequence with a woman stuck on a zip line that is honestly one of the most suspenseful sequences I’ve seen in some time. I was not expecting that from a sappy dog movie.
The characters are also nothing special, but they’re serviceable. The other members of the racing team are stock inspirational characters with generic motivations, but they pull it off well enough. There is the female climbing expert that is there to honor her dying father. There’s the guy that’s past his prime and needs to overcome a leg injury. There’s the guy that’s obsessed with social media who needs to learn to value the moment over posting the moment. And then there is Wahlberg, who can play this kind of scrappy underdog in his sleep but still isn’t sleepwalking through the film. As a lead, this character isn’t anything new, but Wahlberg’s inherent likeability makes him easy to root for. It’s not exactly an inspired bunch of characters, but they are likeable and able to carry a story like this.
Then there is the dog and I am happy to report that it is an actual dog. I’m sad to say that I now give points to movies just for using an actual animal instead of a computer-generated eyesore, but here we are. Ukai, the dog playing Arthur, is incredibly well-trained and emotive, bringing a real sense of character and sadness to the titular animal. And what kind of people don’t like dogs? Assholes, that’s who. I wish the producers of this movie had talked to the lazy fucks that made Argyle and convinced them to use a real frigging cat in that movie. That cat still haunts me.
Arthur the King is nothing special. It hits all of the plot beats that you would expect it to hit and it tugs at the heartstings it all the ways that you would expect. There are no surprises. But it does all of those things well and is surprisingly solid in its action sequences. My theater was mainly filled with families and that is the ideal audience for this. The kids really seemed to like it and the parents weren’t bored. If you want to bring a kid or a grandparent to the theater or you’re just looking for something to watch on a rainy afternoon, you won’t be disappointed with Arthur the King if you don’t expect more than it is promising.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_the_King#/media/File:Arthur_the_king_poster.jpg
