Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Síða 22

No cinematic genre testifies more ur-
gently to the realities of contemporary
American family life than the direct-to-
video talking-pet movie. A deceptively
homespun transposition of a French lit-
erary classic to a middle-class Ameri-
can household, ‘The Three Dogateers’
is an incisive work that fits perfectly
into the visionary Sigur Rós oeuvre.
This 2014 film is an exemplary en-
try in the talking-pet cycle, with a plot
structured around the absence of the
pets’ owners, and following their ad-
ventures when left
“home alone,” as it
were: three fluffy
white lapdogs get
into scrapes, solve
crimes, and restore
the house to its nor-
mal state just mo-
ments before the re-
turn of the oblivious
owners, who glance
about and satisfy
themselves that ev-
erything is order and tails are wagging
subserviently—and smile, secure in the
belief that nothing happened while they
were away.
This depiction of secretly capable
canines—like the precocious and re-
sourceful child protagonists of much
youth-oriented cinema—flatters the
young audience by bestowing narra-
tive agency on their on-screen sur-
rogates. Films such as ‘The Three
Dogateers’ often serve a “third par-
ent” function: a familiar, beloved tape
to pop in when Mom and Dad need a
break. (In my family, the third parent
was ‘Follow That Bird’.) Plopped down
in front of the TV while the grown-ups
catch up on chores or sleep, the child
is entertained, certainly—but also rev-
els in a story about the rich, secret life
of a supposedly dependent member of
the family. From Snoopy’s imaginary
adventures as a World War One fly-
ing ace, to Perry the
Platypus’s secret spy
missions on ‘Phineas
and Ferb’, the ex-
ploits of film and TV
pets speak directly to
the boundless inte-
rior lives of even the
most housebound
children. ‘The Three
Dogateers’ is, in its
earnest commitment
to its surreal narra-
tive, a profound meditation on the vital
role of private fantasy in all family dy-
namics.
The auteur of ‘The Three Dogateers’
is writer-director-producer-editor Jes-
se Baget. He also provides the voices
for two of the three dogs, like if Orson
Welles had had the range to play more
than one role in ‘Citizen Kane’. As the
alpha dog, Arfamis, a mutt with perky
ears and a scruffy tale, Baget drops
into a low octave with rough-edged in-
flections and a continental accent, like
McGruff the Crime Dog imitating Pepe
Le Pew; to embody the bearded, food-
obsessed Barkos, he adopts a poky yet
excitable drawl, like Sam Elliott on a
nitrous high (Barkos is the only one of
the Dogateers whose
bowel movements
are crucial to the
film’s plot). Rounding
out the trio is Wagos,
voiced by Danielle
Judovits. A “pedigree
Maltese,” as she fre-
quently asserts, Wa-
gos voices irritation
at the boys’ Mutt-
and-Jeff act, particu-
larly condescending
to shelter dog Ar-
famis’s tall tales of
his time in the “dun-
geon.” Though as
Arfamis’s pretentions
to gallantry are con-
firmed by the Three
Dogateers’ Yuletide
odyssey, Wagos warms to him gradu-
ally, racial and class divisions dissolving
in a romance-thriller dynamic familiar
from classics from ‘The 39 Steps’ to
‘The Running Man’.
As the Dogateers’ owner, ‘90s tele-
vision Superman Dean Cain is far more
Clark Kent than Kal-el. A henpecked tie
salesman with a love of jelly doughnuts,
he’s called away on urgent business
two days before Christmas, leaving the
house susceptible to two burglars, who
soon arrive to steal all the presents
stacked under the Christmas tree—
even the tree itself. (Given Dean Cain’s
sideline as a Fox News pundit, some
may detect a “War on Christmas” par-
able here.)
Given that the opening credits begin
with a title card reading “Three Doga-
teers Save Christmas, LLC presents,”
it’s perhaps not a spoiler to say that
the Dogateers strike out on the open
road to foil the two
bumbling grinches
who stole Christmas;
on the way, they
encounter prairie
dogs who speak in
popsicle-stick riddles
(What do you call a
cold dog sitting on a
rabbit? Google it…),
and elude a sadis-
tic, moustached dog
catcher trying to set
the world record for
annual dogs caught.
The human cast is
shot largely either
with fisheye lenses,
or from the waist
down, reinforcing the
viewer’s identifica-
tion with the protagonists. Most phone
calls in this resourcefully budgeted film
are shot from one side only, with non-
verbal squawking on the other end, like
Peanuts parents.
The three dogs—Tigre, Pepper,
and Dixy—give uniformly strong per-
formances, though one wonders over
the extent to which they were created
in the editing room. The dogs seem to
have been very responsive to the “sit”
command; from the close-up cover-
age of his three stars, Baget isolates
actorly head tilts and blinks to match
the dialogue. (The Dogateers move
their mouths when they talk, through
the miracle of computer graphics—if
you’ve ever received a video of a photo
manipulated with the YAKiT app, you
have a sense of the way this film strikes
out into the Uncanny Valley, with just
the corny, yappy banter of the dialogue
to keep things this side of dystopian.)
Action sequences, from break-ins and
escapes to an extended car chase,
are assembled in rapid montage, with
many insert close-ups of paws adjacent
to objects (steering wheels, the handle
of a longbow) cut together with all the
usable parts of long shots showing
rocks flying through windows, or sta-
tion wagons swerving on roads while
traveling well under the speed limit.
The film’s Southern California and
Tucson desert locations are hardly win-
try, and the contrast with the clip that
establishes the Dogateers’ home as a
snowy, Thomas Kinkade-like red brick
Victorian, is so jarring as to be practi-
cally Brechtian. But there is a definite
seasonal glow to the storyline: the
Dogateers return home with the help
of a red-suited, elderly shopping mall
Santa, with a surprising facility for de-
livering Christmas miracles. As with all
Christmas classics, the draw of hearth
and home exerts a powerful effect in
‘The Three Dogateers’—it’s something
the holiday-movie genre has in com-
mon with the greatest animals-at-large
movies, from ‘Homeward Bound’ to
my beloved ‘Follow That Bird’. For all
the thrills that kids have while their
imaginations run wild and their movie
pets run off-leash, there’s no place
like home. As Arfamis says: “Bark my
words.”
They’re great.
22
Paw-teur
Theory
'The Three Dogateers', and a
unified theory of the direct-to-
video talking-pet movies
Part three of MOVING PICTURES:
an ongoing essay on modern cinema
ASCH ON CINEMA
By MARK ASCH – Reykjavík Grapevine Cinema Expert-in-Residence
‘The Three
Dogateers’ is,
in its earnest
commitment
to its surreal
narrative,
a profound
meditation on
the vital role of
private fantasy
in all family
dynamics.
Barkos is the
only one of
the Dogateers
whose bowel
movements are
crucial to the
film’s plot
Comic | Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir