''Arctic Dogs'' (also known as ''Arctic Justice'' or ''Polar Squad'' in the UK) is a 2019 computer-animated

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...

co-written and directed by Aaron Woodley and co-directed by Dimos Vrysellas. The film stars the voices of Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum,

James Franco James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor and filmmaker. For his role in '' 127 Hours'' (2010), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Franco is known for his roles in films, such as Sam Raimi's ''Spider-M ...

, John Cleese,

Omar Sy Omar Sy (, ff, 𞤌𞤥𞤢𞤪 𞤅𞤭, Omar Si; born 20 January 1978) is a French actor, best known in France for his sketches with Fred Testot on the '' Service après-vente des émissions'' television show on Canal+ (2005–2012). He gain ...

Michael Madsen Michael Søren Madsen (born September 25, 1957) is an American actor. He has starred in many films and television series, frequently collaborating with director Quentin Tarantino, most famously in the latter's debut film '' Reservoir Dogs'' (1 ...

Laurie Holden Heather Laurie Holden (born December 17, 1969) is a Canadian-American actress, producer, and human rights activist, known for her roles as Marita Covarrubias in ''The X-Files'' (1996–2002), Adele Stanton in '' The Majestic'' (2001), Cybil Benn ...

, Anjelica Huston, and Alec Baldwin.

Entertainment Studios Entertainment Studios, Inc., also known as Allen Media Group, is an American media and entertainment company based in Los Angeles. Owned and founded in 1993 by businessman Byron Allen, the company was initially involved in the production and ...

released the film on November 1 in Canada and the United States. It was a

box-office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

, grossing less than a fifth of its production budget of $50 million, and was panned by critics.

Plot

Swifty the Arctic Fox ( Jeremy Renner) works in the mailroom of the Arctic Blast Delivery Service, but he has much bigger dreams. He wishes to become a Top Dog, the Arctic's star husky couriers. To prove he can do it, he commandeers one of the sleds and delivers a mysterious package to a secret location. Once there, he stumbles onto a hidden fortress, overseen by the nefarious Otto Von Walrus ( John Cleese). The blubbery evil genius commands an army of oddly polite puffin henchmen. Swifty discovers Otto Von Walrus' villainous plan to drill beneath the snow-packed surface to unleash masses of ancient gas to melt the Arctic and become the world's supreme ruler. To stop this sinister scheme, Swifty enlists the help of his friends: P.B.( Alec Baldwin), a neurotic polar bear, Lemmy (

), a scatterbrained albatross, Jade Fox ( Heidi Klum), a brainy red fox engineer and Swifty's love interest, Leopold (

) and Bertha (also voiced by Heidi Klum), two conspiracy theorist otters, and Magda ( Anjelica Huston), his curmudgeonly caribou boss.

Voice cast

* Jeremy Renner as Swifty, an

Arctic fox The Arctic fox (''Vulpes lagopus''), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in ...

**Anderson Lewis as Young Swifty * Alec Baldwin as P.B., a polar bear * Heidi Klum as Jade, a red fox, and Bertha, an

Eurasian otter The Eurasian otter (''Lutra lutra''), also known as the European otter, Eurasian river otter, common otter, and Old World otter, is a semiaquatic mammal native to Eurasia. The most widely distributed member of the otter subfamily (Lutrinae) of th ...

**Lillian Moloy as Young Jade * John Cleese as Doc Otto Van Walrus, a

walrus The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the fami ...

* Anjelica Huston as Magda, a caribou *

as Lemmy, an albatross *

as Leopold, an Eurasian otter *

as Duke, a Siberian Husky *

as Dakota, a Siberian Husky * Donny Falsetti as Dusty, a Siberian Husky * Nina Senicar as Countdown Inka * Aaron Woodley as Puffin Leader, a horned puffin * Soraya Azzabi as Alma * Jason Deline as "Nasty Naz" Narwhal, a narwhal

Release

''Arctic Dogs'' was released on November 1, 2019, in both Canada and the United States. Lionsgate Home Entertainment released it on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

on February 4, 2020. It made $1.3 million in total US video sales.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, ''Arctic Dogs'' was released alongside '' Harriet'', '' Terminator: Dark Fate'', and '' Motherless Brooklyn'', and was projected to gross $5–10 million from 2,835 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $700,000 on its first day, and ended up debuting to just $2.9 million, finishing 10th and marking the worst opening of all-time for a film playing in over 2,800 theaters.

Critical response

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews and an average rating of .

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

assigned the film a weighted average score of 28 out of 100 based on four critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed at

PostTrak PostTrak is a U.S.-based service that surveys film audiences for film studios. History The service conducts surveys in the top 20 markets in the U.S. and Canada with the use of polling cards and electronic kiosks. A PostTrak report for a film ...

gave it an overall positive score of 64% and a 41% "definite recommend". In 2020, it received a Canadian Cinema Editors Awards nomination for Best Editing in Animation.

Other media

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single in ...

set after the events of the film titled ''Arctic Friends'' was released on September 15, 2020 on both

Apple TV+ Apple TV is a digital media player and microconsole developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is a small network appliance hardware that plays received media data such as video and audio to a television set or external display. Since its secon ...

and Amazon Prime Video, consisting of 40 collections (160 shorts). Another spin-off series titled ''

Puffins Puffins are any of three species of small alcids (auks) in the bird genus ''Fratercula''. These are pelagic seabirds that feed primarily by diving in the water. They breed in large colonies on coastal cliffs or offshore islands, nesting in crev ...

'' was also released, featuring the voice of Johnny Depp as Johnny Puff. A spin-off of ''Puffins'', entitled ''Puffins Impossible'', is slated for release and is to consist of 16 five-minute episodes with Depp to reprise his role as Puff. Αlso released two Christmas live action/animation spin off films titled Christmas Thieves (2021) and The Good Witch of Christmas (2022).http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/the-good-witch-of-christmas/

References

External links

* * * {{Aaron Woodley 2019 films 2019 computer-animated films American computer-animated films Canadian animated feature films Canadian computer-animated films Italian animated films Films set in the Arctic Animated films about foxes Animated films about dogs Animated films about birds Films about otters Films about polar bears Films about conspiracy theories Films adapted into television shows Films scored by David Buckley Assemblage Entertainment Lionsgate animated films Entertainment Studios films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films 2010s Canadian films 2010s Italian films