The Lassie films have a long standing reputation of all being rather bad so the question was if this one could finally change things. Well, I am here to report that it could not change thing at all. This is one title that does not surpass its limits or do anything even like that. Instead, it just repeats all of the same mistakes that you are used to seeing from the franchise. It’s unfortunate but not really unexpected. No, if anything you are used to it and we’ll just have to keep on waiting for a good one.

The main dog in this film is named Bill and he’s a nice dog. Bill is a strong dog who can run around a lot but his owners don’t think that he has what it takes to shepherd the sheep when the going gets tough. Kathie wants to prove the world wrong and runs around with Bill to try and prove her point. It was a good attempt at least. Unfortunately Bill is often the subject of bad luck. Over the course of the movie he is run over, shot with a gun, and even gets drafted into the army. While in the army, Bill is sent to an active warzone with bombs flying all over and he gets injured enough to the point where he develops PTSD.

His owner also goes too far in trying to win the day and has Bill continue to move even while he is super injured. This doesn’t help things out either. Bill then becomes so wild that he eats/injures other animals and a warrant is put out for his death. Yeah this dog can’t catch a break. You get the feeling that the film really wanted to up the stakes as much as possible and show how this wasn’t your average Lassie film but my answer to that is it just makes this one that much more. It’s a Lassie film so you are expecting the dog to get shot but why go through all of this other hardship as well?

It makes the whole film rather try hard and edgy. You really didn’t need to see any of that. The drama doesn’t make the film any more engaging or anything. It just holds it back. With this level of animal violence the film never stood a chance. Meanwhile it’s also no that interesting. None of the characters really glue you o the screen. The main character is Kathie and while she means well, she’s too young to do much of anything. Like when Bill is taken away to the army, there is noting she can do. She doesn’t even know what happened to Bill after he vanished for a while there. Then when Kathie does reappear with Bill, one of the first things she does is accidentally disclose his position to the cops which almost proves fatal for Bill.

Naturally it’s not like that’s really her fault as she couldn’t have known but it’s hardly a great look for her either. Then for Bill’s owner at the army, I didn’t like him for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Having Bill continue to fight when he was so injured was not a good look. Bill needed to lie down and recharge, not get right back on the saddle like this. The only decent character was the old man who tried keeping Kathie calm and then tried keeping Bill as a secret in the end. He was old enough to know how the world works and wasn’t just spilling his guts about everything. The guy knew how to keep a secret.

Still, it’s a rather low bar for characters. This is definitely not the kind of film where you expect great characters or anything like that but even more decent ones would have helped. I suppose at best the writing is decent. The characters still talk in the old fashioned way that is always fun. I also thought that the pacing was fairly reasonable. They manage to squeeze in a lot of different locations and characters into a film that’s not overly long or anything. So the movie really knew how to balance its time effectively. It just didn’t have a great story to accompany it.

Now when a film has lost the plot as badly as this one has, I like to add some some advice for how the film could have succeeded. Okay so hear me out, you cut out all injuries that happened to Bill in this film right. Have him go missing one day and so the main characters have to try and find him. Ultimately they end up finding him helping out the US army in bomb detection or something. They take Bill back home as a hero and that’s the movie. It’s still wholesome and has the army subplot and everything. It just ends up being a much more light hearted movie with great moments rather than trying so hard to be a suspenseful tragedy. We don’t need any of those. Extra bonus if you make the main character Lassie instead of Bill since that would work a lot better.

Overall, There’s not a whole lot to say about this film beyond that. It follows through the Lassie formula to the point where this might as well be an edgy reboot. Even the whole joining the army thing has already been done before. I don’t get why the series doesn’t just make a movie that’s all slice of life. Lets just see Lassie running around town and having fun. Yes, Lassie, not some future descendent named Bill. Doesn’t that completely take away from the point of the series? I’m watching the movie to see Lassie, not another dog. I dare say that the title is really clickbait. Yeah you can use it to tie into things later but it’s click bait because the first assumption with that title is that Lassie will be appearing. Definitely skip this film as quickly as you can.

Overall 2/10