In 'A Dog's Way Home', a Dog Becomes a Mother Surrogate to a Cougar Cub

A Dog’s Way Home tells the story of a dog named Bella (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard).  As a puppy, she lives under the ruin of an abandoned house with her mother and siblings, along with a mother cat and her kittens.  However, when animal control takes away her family and a couple of the kittens, she is adopted by Mother Cat and is raised alongside the remaining kittens.  Soon, she is found by a boy named Lucas (Jonah Hauer-King) who then takes her in.  Bella finds life with Lucas and his mother Terri (Ashley Judd) to be bliss, and she grows up to be a happy dog.  However, one day, she gets separated from them, and she sets off on a journey across the wilderness and towns of Colorado to get herself home.  Along the way, she encounters multiple, tough challenges and meets different friends and enemies – both human and beast.

I actually thought A Dog’s Way Home was the sequel to A Dog’s Purpose.  It was only after watching it that I learned that it’s an entirely different film from the actual sequel, A Dog’s Journey, which is also slated for a 2019 release.  Well, it’s only understandable that I mixed them up since both films follow the same concept – a dog whose thoughts are being narrated – and the titles are somewhat similar (Journey vs. Way Home).  Most importantly, they are adaptations of the books of the same names by W. Bruce Cameron, and he also co-wrote the scripts for both.  However, the production company and distributor of A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey are different from the production company and distributor of A Dog’s Way Home, and thus, the movies don’t technically belong under the same umbrella franchise.

Anyway, A Dog’s Way Home is your typical factory-assembled pet comedy drama.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s designed to be sweet, safe, and inoffensive – keen to put a smile on the audience’s faces and tug their heartstrings.  In this sense, it aptly pleases and entertains.  On the other hand, it’s barely more profound than the cute animal videos we enjoy watching in Facebook and Youtube.

For me, the highlight of the entire movie (as what’s spelled out in the title of this review) is when Bella – remembering how Mother Cat showed her kindness by adopting her when she lost her mom – decides to assume the role of "mother cat" to an orphaned cougar cub whom she adorably names "Big Kitten."  The CGI on Big Kitten is kind of laughably bad, but their dynamic and shared story arc are winsomely heartwarming.

In the end, A Dog’s Way Home is fun, adorable family film.  But it doesn’t really offer anything special that we haven’t seen before.