Cert: 12A
★★★★✩

Channing Tatum (Magic Mike, Hail, Caesar!, 21 Jump Street) stars and co-directs this new comedy alongside writer-producer Reid Carolin (Magic Mike XXL). The duo make their respective feature directorial debut in this wild and decidedly uneven adventure about an injured army ranger whose life is thrown into a tailspin when paired up with an unruly canine.
After a head injury sustained during combat puts him out of action for the foreseeable future, army ranger Briggs (Tatum) finds himself stuck in dead end retail jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Debilitated by crippling PTSD and daily physical struggles, Briggs begs his superiors for a chance to rejoin, but instead he is given one last mission. He is charged with driving Lulu, a fallen soldier’s unruly combat Belgian Shepherd dog across the country to attend her former owner’s funeral.
After years tracking Taliban fighters in the field, exposed to traumatic situations, Lulu has also developed severe PTSD symptoms of her own and is unwilling to cooperate with her new handler. The rest, as one might guess, is a story in which dog and human find common ground and bond over their respective traumas.
Dog movies are often tricky to navigate as they tend to vary from the laugh-out-loud funny (case in point, Turner and Hooch) to the simply devastating — let’s face it, which dog lover hasn’t had their heart broken into a million pieces by Marley And Me or A Dog’s Purpose. Here, co-directors Tatum and Carolin manage to mix both genres in this shambolic, yet undeniably likeable film.
Dog often feels a little misjudged and tonally muddled. It wants to deal with thorny post-combat issues, including PTSD and the treatment of injured soldiers, but make you laugh too. Still, a combination of Tatum’s rugged appeal and a touching story about overcoming adversity give this disjointed drama comedy just the right amount of likability to avoid being a complete dud. And the dog is cute too.