The Art of Racing in the Rain is A Dog’s Purpose…But With Race Cars and Tommy Wiseau!
Have you read and/or seen A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey? You know, the one where a dog voiceovers the stuff that happens in his multiple lives? Well, in The Art of Racing in the Rain, Enzo (Kevin Costner) narrates the story of his life as a dog (gee, where have I seen this before) and his human master, Denny (Oh hai Milo Ventimiglia), who is a racecar driver. Denny’s life changes when he meets Enzo and the love of his life, Eve (Amanda Seyfried), as they have a child and everything seems to be fine, or so that’s what Denny seems to think (Don’t worry about it, right?).
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The film enters in “been-there-done-that” territory. Literally three months ago, Gail Mancuso made A Dog’s Journey, and The Art of Racing in the Rain is barely indistinguishable from ADJ. In both movies, the dog is able to sniff out cancer and, in both movies, the dog dies at the end and we see the dog run in a valley of grass and emptiness, like in A Dog’s Journey when Bailey (Josh Gad) joins Dog Heaven with his BOI ETHAN (Dennis Quaid). In terms of originality, this movie has none. It follows the exact same structure as two other “talking” dog movies that came out in 2019, A Dog’s Way Home and A Dog’s Journey. The dog narrates the story and learns life lessons, as a “stupid dog”, through the humans. The story feels incredibly repetitive and old, however, The Art of Racing in the Rain has enough material to make it enjoyable.
Sure, the story is highly predictable. So predictable that I predicted Amanda Seyfried’s outcome during the film’s opening sequence, where DENNY (holy shit stop toying with my mind Tommy Wiseau, you’re tearing me apart!) sees Enzo, frail, on the floor, lying in his own urine. Where’s Seyfried if the scene is set in the present? I’ll tell you where she is — dead. I was right. I have an eye for the “predictable”, because I watch too many movies. As soon as she takes pills for her headache, I was like “oh, here we go”, and I was right. She dies about 25 minutes later. Can’t it help that books that get adapted into film don’t ressemble one another ? Oh, this one has race cars in it? Damn.
I will say that the race sequences are incredibly exciting and beautifully shot by Ross Emery. Visually, it’s something else, especially when the rain starts pouring. It’s a rush of adrenaline that you can only feel in the theater, with a crowd of people. The 1.85:1 cinematography is stunning throughout the entire film, but is at its most compelling when someone drives a car on the race track. Gary Cole plays Don Kitch, Denny’s race coach, and, while the role he has is small, he is excellent in every scene he’s in. I wasn’t a particularly big fan of Milo Ventimiglia as Denny. His performance was VERY wooden and quite flat, kinda like Philip Haldiman as Denny in T. Wiseau’s The Room, the same with Amanda Seyfried. Both of them are great actors, but the material they have been given are too familiar and clichéd and the actors aren’t able to make it interesting with the direction of Simon Curtis.
I did like Kevin Costner as Enzo, whose narration is highly compelling and makes you invested in the movie. The trippy scene where Enzo hallucinates as Eve and Zoe (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) leave for her parents while leaving the dog behind is a very interesting sequence, where he hallucinated a plush Zebra with demonic eyes committing suicide. I have no idea what it’s doing in the movie, but it was hella wack. Costner provided great narration and enhanced many of the movie’s terrible sequences, or the ones that make no sense. Like, why would you leave your dog behind for TWO FULL DAYS?
But Costner also enhances the film’s best sequences — after Eve’s death, Denny is caught in a custody battle with Eve’s parents (Kathy Baker & Martin Donovan) as they want to take custody of Zoe and are framing him as a guilty man with an assault charge. That part of the movie is extremely compelling, because you feel for Denny as he has just buried his wife and their parents want to manipulate him and take control of his life. Martin Donovan is absolutely excellent as the scrupulous father, who wants to ruin Denny in the ground, because of his job. The scenes involving him and Denny are always interesting and add for fantastic drama. There isn’t an awful lot of “racing” in The Art of Racing in the Rain, but it doesn’t matter. The film is carried by a great voice-over from Kevin Costner who makes a lot of analogies to human life vs. dog life. He brings so much humanity to the role of Enzo that you almost feel that he is, in a way, human. (Bad sentence, I know, but cheesy like the movie!). The movie IS melodramatically cheesy, and that’s OK, because it’s a dog movie! Ventimiglia’s character and Seyfried’s character are very predictable and hackneyed, but it’s the story that, I believe, will reasonate through everyone that makes the movie. The racing sequences are exciting and the courtroom drama to finish off the film is a fantastic way to top off a mixed-bag of a drama. Also, don’t try and pass off Seattle for Vancouver — it doesn’t work.
✯✯✯
