Arctic Dogs

Arctic Dogs (also known as Arctic Justice internationally and as Polar Squad in the UK) is a 2019 computer-animated comedy film co-written and directed by Aaron Woodley and co-directed by Dimos Vrysellas. It was released on November 1, 2019 by Entertainment Studios in Canada and the United States, and not only received negative reviews, but received only $3.1 million against its $50 million budget. The film was released directly to Netflix in Latin America, Germany and France.

Plot
Swifty the Arctic fox discovers a devious plan by Otto Von Walrus to drill beneath the Arctic surface to unleash enough gas to melt all the ice. With help from his friends -- an introverted polar bear, a scatterbrained albatross, a crafty fox, and two paranoid otters -- Swifty and the gang spring into action to foil Otto's plot and save the day.

Why The Cold Brew Doesn't Hit

 * 1) The story is very cliched and predictable, as the whole "outcast who doesn't belong" premise has already been done before in lots of other films. And it feels like it took too much of it's main plot for the movie mh:greatestmovies:Balto. As Balto is about has a half-dog half-wolf who lives with his adoptive family (consisting of a goose and pair of polar bears) in Alaska and is despised by humans and dogs alike. But is later hailed as a hero after assisting a group of lost sled dogs in delivering a supply of anti-toxin to the town after it starts suffering from a Diphtheria epidemic which leads to him being accepted by society. And this film on the other hand has a dog who lives in the arctic and wants more out of life by being accepted into a social status that is considered "cool" by his society and later reaches said status by saving the arctic from being destroyed by scheming villains. Sound familiar?
 * 2) The animation, while look a little bit better than Assemblage Entertainment's previous film, it also can be bland since the backgrounds feel pretty artificial with little more than the typical "town", "arctic", "villain's lair". settings being pretty much the only ones present in the entirety of the movie's runtime, not to mention the tremendous amount of snow and ice present in said backgrounds. Not to mention that, while they aren't very noticeable unless you look very closely and don't come up frequently, they are moments in the film that actually have visible glitches in the animation.
 * 3) *But also, unlike films like mh:greatestmovies:Zootopia or mh:greatestmovies:Fantastic Mr. Fox, it doesn't do anything new or interesting with the concept of talking animals with human features. And they're just stereotypical talking animals who walk on two feet and wear clothes just like every other piece of media dedicated to animals acting like people.
 * 4) All the characters are just annoying, few charismatic and  one-dimensional like:
 * 5) * Swifty is the generic protagonist who wants more out of life and wants to be at the top of society other than simply working at his job that he sees as mundane and boring. This isn't helped by the fact that not only is the trope itself cliched like heck, but Swifty's actual motivation in it of itself it also insanely dumb. He wants to become a UPS driver. That's it. He wants to be known for delivering packages and not just seen as an average person by those around him. Not to mention how his passion to get more out of life doesn't feel like true ambition but rather like arrogance and overconfidence (which also leads to him making stupid decisions out of not thinking his actions through), making him an unpleasant and unlikable protagonist of top of already being cliched.
 * 6) * PB is the best friend who serves as the pessimistic foil to the protagonist's more outgoing and reckless nature. And the trope he plays as the best friend who's the polar opposite of the main character has already been done before and better in films like mh:greatestmovies:Shrek and mh:greatestmovies:Meet the Robinsons, and continues to be done much better with movies like Soul.
 * 7) * Jade is the love interest who also serves as the movie's "strong female character" and voice of reason to the rest of the cast. And romance between her and Swifty is incredibly forced and underdeveloped.
 * 8) * Lemmy's almost entire personality revolves around him being stupid.
 * 9) * Magda is the short-tempered and strict boss of the protagonist.
 * 10) * Leopold and Bertha, a pair of French conspiracy theorist otters, are extremely annoying and pointless to the main plot of the film.
 * 11) * Otto Van Walrus is a blatant rip-off of Mr. Waternoose from mh:greatestmovies:Monsters, Inc., as he's a twist villain who deceives the heroes in order to pull off his plan, and relies on mechanical spider legs to get around, similar to the Pixar villain.
 * 12) ** Otto's army of puffins are not just unfunny comic reliefs, but they're also blatant rip-offs of the minions from mh:greatestmovies:Despicable Me. Something which has already been done before by the same studio with Norm of the North. And if they didn't dognap the delivery dogs earlier, they and Otto could've easily won.
 * 13) It is one of those films where the only selling point is the fact that lots of celebs are in the voice cast, in an attempt to attract people to the movie.
 * 14) Marketing of the film was very poor, since a lot of people were actually unaware of the movie's existence, compared to many other films that were released before this, which may explain why this movie bombed at the box office.
 * 15) Terrible comedy with lots of dated references. As it turns out, this movie was written by people behind such films as Escape from Planet Earth, Spark: A Space Tail (which is directed by the same director), and The Nut Job, which means this film shares the same problems as said films. Not to mention, the timing seems extremely off, as they try to make comedy by using poor cartoonish reactionary shots.
 * 16) The final counters between the main characters and Otto Von Walrus is very boring. As there's some camera shots aimed at the characters during the chase scenes.
 * 17) Forced messages about global warming in the form of the villain's plan to destroy the arctic. It isn't helped by the fact that this message feels forced down the audience's throat.
 * 18) Like Alpha and Omega, the film tries to portray hollow logs as good material to make sleds out of. When in reality, they're not.
 * 19) Misleading Title: Despite being called Arctic Dogs, they aren't actually the main characters of the film. As while, yes, Swifty and Jade are foxes, the rest of the cast is made up of various different arctic animals (PB is a polar bear, Magda is a caribou, Lemmy is an albatross, etc.). And dogs that generally do come to mind when the subject of "Arctic Dogs" is brought up like huskies don't appear once in the entirety of the film's runtime, not even as minor or background characters.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The voice acting is pretty decent with both Jeremy Renner and Heidi Klum seems to be the only ones who cares about putting in the effort here, along with to an extent John Cleese and it's nice to hear his voice once again.
 * 2) As mentioned before, despise having some animation errors and generic backgrounds the animation is a improviment over the Norm of the North animation. As Assemblage Entertainment did a passable job animating the movie.
 * 3) The idea of having an Arctic fox as a protagonist is a very great idea since they never used this kind of animal in a animated film, despise the bad execution.
 * 4) The character designs are cute, specially with young Swifty.
 * 5) The soundtrack is pretty entertainming to listen.

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 ($47 million was lost), 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 website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 13% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. Metacritic 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 gave it an overall positive score of 64% and a 41% "definite recommend".

Accolades
Despite negative reviews, it received a Canadian Cinema Editors Awards nomination for Best Editing in Animation.

Trivia

 * The film's advertising tagline "When that cold brew hits" got some memetic mutation.

Videos
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