''Arctic Dogs'' (also known as ''Arctic Justice'' or ''Polar Squad'' in the UK) is a 2019

computer-animated Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes ( still images) and dynamic images ( moving images), while computer animation re ...

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending ( black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the o ...

co-written and directed by

Aaron Woodley Aaron Woodley (born 1971) is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. Early life Woodley was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of costume designer Denise Cronenberg and nephew of filmmaker David Cronenberg. He studied animations at Art Gallery ...

and co-directed by Dimos Vrysellas. The film stars the voices of

Jeremy Renner Jeremy Lee Renner (born January 7, 1971) is an American actor and musician. He began his career by appearing in independent films such as '' Dahmer'' (2002) and ''Neo Ned'' (2005), then supporting roles in bigger films, such as ''S.W.A.T.'' (2 ...

Heidi Klum Heidi Klum (; born 1 June 1973) is a German-American model, television host, producer, and businesswoman. She appeared on the cover of the '' Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue'' in 1998 and was the first German model to become a Victoria's Secr ...

James Franco James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor and filmmaker. For his role in '' 127 Hours'' (2010), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Franco is known for his roles in films, such as Sam Raimi's ''Spider- ...

John Cleese John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and ...

Omar Sy Omar Sy (, ff, 𞤌𞤥𞤢𞤪 𞤅𞤭, Omar Si; born 20 January 1978) is a French actor, best known in France for his sketches with Fred Testot on the '' Service après-vente des émissions'' television show on Canal+ (2005–2012). He gai ...

Michael Madsen Michael Søren Madsen (born September 25, 1957) is an American actor. He has starred in many films and television series, frequently collaborating with director Quentin Tarantino, most famously in the latter's debut film ''Reservoir Dogs'' (19 ...

Laurie Holden Heather Laurie Holden (born December 17, 1969) is a Canadian-American actress, producer, and human rights activist, known for her roles as Marita Covarrubias in ''The X-Files'' (1996–2002), Adele Stanton in '' The Majestic'' (2001), Cybil Ben ...

Anjelica Huston Anjelica Huston ( ; born July 8, 1951) is an American actress and director. Known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters, she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as no ...

, and

Alec Baldwin Alexander Rae Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. In his early career, Baldwin played both leading and supporting roles in a variety of films such as Tim Burton's '' Beetlejuice'' (1988), Mike Nich ...

Entertainment Studios Entertainment Studios, Inc., also known as Allen Media Group, is an American media and entertainment company based in Los Angeles. Owned and founded in 1993 by businessman Byron Allen, the company was initially involved in the production and ...

released the film on November 1 in Canada and the United States. It was a

box-office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

, grossing less than a fifth of its production budget of $50 million, and was panned by critics.

Plot

Swifty the Arctic Fox (

) works in the mailroom of the Arctic Blast Delivery Service, but he has much bigger dreams. He wishes to become a Top Dog, the Arctic's star husky couriers. To prove he can do it, he commandeers one of the sleds and delivers a mysterious package to a secret location. Once there, he stumbles onto a hidden fortress, overseen by the nefarious Otto Von Walrus (

). The blubbery evil genius commands an army of oddly polite puffin henchmen. Swifty discovers Otto Von Walrus' villainous plan to drill beneath the snow-packed surface to unleash masses of ancient gas to melt the Arctic and become the world's supreme ruler. To stop this sinister scheme, Swifty enlists the help of his friends: P.B.(

), a neurotic polar bear, Lemmy (

), a scatterbrained albatross, Jade Fox (

), a brainy red fox engineer and Swifty's love interest, Leopold (

) and Bertha (also voiced by Heidi Klum), two conspiracy theorist otters, and Magda (

), his curmudgeonly caribou boss.

Voice cast

as Swifty, an

Arctic fox The Arctic fox (''Vulpes lagopus''), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in ...

**Anderson Lewis as Young Swifty *

as P.B., a polar bear *

as Jade, a red fox, and Bertha, an

Eurasian otter The Eurasian otter (''Lutra lutra''), also known as the European otter, Eurasian river otter, common otter, and Old World otter, is a semiaquatic mammal native to Eurasia. The most widely distributed member of the otter subfamily (Lutrinae) of ...

**Lillian Moloy as Young Jade *

as Doc Otto Van Walrus, a

walrus The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the f ...

as Magda, a caribou *

as Lemmy, an

albatross Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes (the tubenoses). They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North P ...

as Leopold, an Eurasian otter *

as Duke, a Siberian Husky *

as Dakota, a Siberian Husky * Donny Falsetti as Dusty, a Siberian Husky *

Nina Senicar Nina may refer to: * Nina (name), a feminine given name and surname Acronyms *National Iraqi News Agency, a news service in Iraq *Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, on the campus of Norwegian University of Science and Technology *No income, n ...

as Countdown Inka *

as Puffin Leader, a

horned puffin The horned puffin (''Fratercula corniculata'') is an auk found in the North Pacific Ocean, including the coasts of Alaska, Siberia and British Columbia. It is a pelagic seabird that feeds primarily by diving for fish. It nests in colonies, often ...

* Soraya Azzabi as Alma *

Jason Deline Jason Deline is a Canadian actor, voice actor, comedian, and director. He is best known for his role as Ernie in '' Ready or Not'', and for voicing the character of Drago in ''Bakugan Battle Brawlers'' and its reboot ''Bakugan Battle Planet''. ...

as "Nasty Naz" Narwhal, a narwhal

Release

''Arctic Dogs'' was released on November 1, 2019, in both Canada and the United States. Lionsgate Home Entertainment released it on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of s ...

on February 4, 2020. It made $1.3 million in total US video sales.

Reception

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, 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 A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews and an average rating of .

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

assigned the film a weighted average score of 28 out of 100 based on four critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews." Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed at

PostTrak PostTrak is a U.S.-based service that surveys film audiences for film studios. History The service conducts surveys in the top 20 markets in the U.S. and Canada with the use of polling cards and electronic kiosks. A PostTrak report for a film ...

gave it an overall positive score of 64% and a 41% "definite recommend". In 2020, it received a Canadian Cinema Editors Awards nomination for Best Editing in Animation.

Other media

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single in ...

set after the events of the film titled ''Arctic Friends'' was released on September 15, 2020 on both

Apple TV+ Apple TV+ is an American subscription streaming service owned and operated by Apple Inc. Launched on November 1, 2019, it offers a selection of original production film and television series called Apple Originals. The service was announced ...

and

Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service p ...

, consisting of 40 collections (160 shorts). Another spin-off series titled ''

Puffins Puffins are any of three species of small alcids ( auks) in the bird genus ''Fratercula''. These are pelagic seabirds that feed primarily by diving in the water. They breed in large colonies on coastal cliffs or offshore islands, nesting in cre ...

'' was also released, featuring the voice of

Johnny Depp John Christopher Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awar ...

as Johnny Puff. A spin-off of ''Puffins'', entitled ''Puffins Impossible'', is slated for release and is to consist of 16 five-minute episodes with Depp to reprise his role as Puff. Αlso released two Christmas live action/animation spin off films titled Christmas Thieves (2021) and The Good Witch of Christmas (2022).http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/the-good-witch-of-christmas/

References

External links

* * * {{Aaron Woodley 2019 films 2019 computer-animated films American computer-animated films Canadian animated feature films Canadian computer-animated films Italian animated films Films set in the Arctic Animated films about foxes Animated films about dogs Animated films about birds Films about otters Films about polar bears Films about conspiracy theories Films adapted into television shows Films scored by David Buckley Assemblage Entertainment Lionsgate animated films Entertainment Studios films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films 2010s Canadian films 2010s Italian films