
Mollie immediately meets 11-year-old CJ (Abby Ryder Fortson, “Ant-Man”), and sticks with her as she grows into a teenager (Kathryn Prescott, “24: Legacy”) who prefers to hang out with grungy bad boy Shane (Jake Manley, Netflix’s “The Order”) than with her best friend Trent (Henry Lau, a pop star in China and South Korea). Not long afterwards, Bailey/Buddy dies, and - following a brief interlude in an Elysian wheat field, where you half-expect him to gambol past Maximus from “Gladiator” - he is reborn as a female puppy who will be named Mollie. Soon, the resentful Gloria leaves the farm and takes CJ with her to suburban Chicago.

See Photos: From Wags to Riches: 9 of TV's Most Famous Dogs (In “A Dog’s Purpose,” Ethan’s father was an alcoholic, too, so perhaps Cameron was intent on examining the subject from all angles. Much to Hannah and Ethan’s concern, Gloria is less interested in playing with CJ than in drinking white wine. One is Hannah’s widowed daughter-in-law Gloria (Betty Gilpin), the other is Gloria’s toddler, Clarity Jane, a name which is mercifully abbreviated to CJ.

Their immaculate farmhouse has two other occupants. Bernard known as Buddy, lives on an idyllic Michigan farm with Ethan and his wife, Hannah (Marg Helgenberger, taking over from Peggy Lipton). The story picks up where the last one left off: Bailey, now an aging St. In other words, “A Dog’s Purpose” was about a dog’s journey, whereas in “A Dog’s Journey,” the dog has a purpose. The second film, a shameless heart-warmer and tear-jerker aimed squarely at tween- and teenage girls, focuses on Bailey’s efforts to stay with Ethan’s step-grandaughter. The first film gave much of its running time to Bailey’s incarnations away from Ethan.
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For the sequel, Hallstrom has handed the reins, or rather the leash, to Gail Mancuso, a sitcom director making her big-screen debut.Īlso Read: 'A Dog's Purpose' Is 'Clumsily Manipulative Dreck' and 6 Other Gnawing Reviewsīut while “A Dog’s Journey” never looks any better than a TV movie, it is more satisfying than “A Dog’s Purpose,” largely because it revolves around a single human-canine relationship.

But it doesn’t have quite the same pedigree as “A Dog’s Purpose.” That film was directed by Lasse Hallstrom, whose output - including, of course, “My Life As A Dog” - has earned numerous Oscar nominations. Bruce Cameron, and adapted from his novel. He is granted a different name, breed, and (sometimes) gender with each metempsychosis, but his enthusiastic thoughts are always voiced by Josh Gad, and he retains his loyalty to his favorite master, Ethan, played in the film’s later scenes by Dennis Quaid.Ĭritics agreed that “A Dog’s Purpose” was, well, a dog, but Bailey, who can recall his past lives, is back in the sequel, “A Dog’s Journey”.Īgain, it is a glossily nostalgic and moralistic Nicholas Sparks-style melodrama co-written by W.

In 2017, “A Dog’s Purpose” catered to both groups by telling the tale of Bailey, whose soul transmigrates into the body of a newborn pup whenever he dies. There is apparently a sizable overlap between people who like films in which cute dogs scamper around happily, and people who like films in which cute dogs drop dead every half an hour.
