Line #2 YMMV/TheCallOfTheWild2020


1	%%Zero-Context Example * SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Music/JohnPowell. Enough Said.
2	* AudienceAlienatingPremise: This is a film adaptation of the Jack London novel of the same name...except as a live-action/animation hybrid with Buck becoming a CGI dog and the story retooled for a family friendly audience. Adults who were interested in an adaptation didn't care for all of the changes and thought the CGI was distracting and unnecessary, while families were turned off because a film based on an old, dark, and violent book (despite its presence in many grade-school libraries) didn't sound very kid-friendly, so it became a huge commercial flop (being released right as the COVID-19 Pandemic was starting to hit the film industry didn't help).
3	* CriticalDissonance: Critics have been decidedly mixed on the film, with the Tomatometer score on Website/RottenTomatoes standing at just 63% based on 213 reviews, which is barely "Fresh" and is the lowest such score in Creator/ChrisSanders' directorial career. Audiences were much more receptive, with a 89% approval rating from verified audiences and 85% overall on Rotten Tomatoes, and an "A–" on [=CinemaScore=].
4	* GratuitousSpecialEffects: Buck is CGI in many shots where a real dog could have been used instead. In fact, CGI is used all over the place for all of the featured animals, many of the environments, even the humans, both main and background extras, are digitally created in a few shots.
5	* {{Narm}}: Quite a few reviews comment that in any scene of Thornton and Buck interacting, it's extremely hard not to think about how you're actually seeing Harrison Ford and a guy in a mo-cap suit trying his best to act like a dog. Ford's gloriously awkward interviews about how weird it was to rub his belly and such just make it better.
6	* NightmareFuel: When Spitz first seems to beat Buck in their fight, as he descends upon the hill towards the other dogs, his shadow falls upon them, looking less like a dog's and more like a demon with horns. The music in the scene doesn't help.
7	* PeripheryDemographic: The film wasn't really popular among its main demographic of children. However, it did find a audience of seniors and older Americans, who were more likely to have read the book in their youth than today's children.
8	* SpecialEffectFailure:
9	** When the first trailer dropped, a number of viewers complained about the CGI used to create Buck being too obvious in some shots. Most critics' reviews for the film also noted that Buck always looks ever so slightly off in every scene he's in, never once looking like he could be mistaken for a real dog. Even Rotten Tomatoes' critics consensus for this film called the CGI "distracting and unnecessary", and the film itself was "nominated" for the 2021 UsefulNotes/GoldenRaspberryAward for Worst Screen Combo with Harrison Ford and "that fake-looking CGI 'dog'" being the recipients. The heavy use of the flawed CGI even hurt the film ''financially'' as it caused the film's budget to inflate rather tremendously (especially for a film of its relatively smaller scale), to the point that the film [[BoxOfficeBomb did not make back its budget in the box office]].
10	** The CGI is of a mixed quality. Many of the animal effects, especially on the dogs, look really cartoonish in motion (which could have been intentional as they need to emote, but still means they don't act much like real dogs), while the environments, both the set extensions and fully CGI environments, are for the most part well done.
11	* SlowPacedBeginning: A common complaint is that while the film does improve once John Thornton takes ownership of Buck, it takes an awful lot of superfluous character interaction and comedic animal shenanigans before it builds up to that plot point.
12	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
13	** John Thornton's subplot about coming to grips with his son's death and ultimately choosing to try and reconcile with his estranged wife ends up being this, since his fate remains the same as it was in the book, [[spoiler:with him dying alone in the wilderness, where no one is likely to find out what happened to him.]]
14	** Hal mentions that the rest of the sled dogs, who have become a surrogate pack towards Buck and have had a lot of bonding with him, ran off into the wilderness. It would have been interesting to see them encounter and interact with Buck in the wild, and perhaps also join up with his wolf family, but they're never seen again.
15	* UnintentionalUncannyValley: A number of viewers have noted that Buck appears to make human expressions with oddly human-like eyes, which is part of what takes them out of the movie.
16	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Despite the animation for some the animals looking unnatural, the actual rendering of all of them (the wolves and the bear) are so photorealistic that when paused, it's easy to forget that they are CGI.
17	* WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids: While the film heavily tones down the more violent scenes from the book and adds in copious amounts of comic relief, it nonetheless retains the scenes of animal abuse and culminates in [[spoiler:one man being thrown into a burning building while another bleeds out due to being shot]], neither of which were even in the original book.

Context YMMV / TheCallOfTheWild2020