Think Like a Dog: Film Review

If you are desperate to find something new for your young child to watch – something that is sickly sweet, breezy, and average – then Think Like a Dog is right up your street.

The film follows 12-year-old boy Oliver (Gabriel Bateman), a tech whiz with a dog named Henry (voiced by Todd Stashwick). After his school experiment goes awry, he becomes able to hear his dog’s thoughts. Using their newfound telepathic connection, Oliver and Henry must work together to fix his parents’ (played by Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox) stale marriage and fight back against famed entrepreneur Mr. Mills (Kunal Nayyar), who wants to steal his technology.

Think Like a Dog is straightforward, super simplistic and fairly mediocre stuff but young children should still have fun with it, thanks to the cute and likeable Bateman and his relationship with his dog, who is the funniest character in the joint, with Stashwick getting the best lines in the script and delivering them with a fun personality and bundles of energy. There is also some mild action thrown in for good measure, dogs teaming up to fight crime, and some fart jokes, so they should be pretty entertained.

The dog is the star of the show and children will probably warm to Bateman, although he isn’t the most natural child actor in the world. But he doesn’t fare too badly up against Fox and Duhamel who phoned it in as the parents suffering marital problems. Nayyar, who I only know from The Big Bang Theory, really hams it up to play the villain of the piece. While his acting was OTT, it was still enjoyable to watch him play the baddie after being so well-known as the lovely Raj.

Think Like a Dog doesn’t have a great script or performances and it is super predictable and sentimental, but the winning relationship with Oliver and his dog saves the day and makes it watchable.

Think Like a Dog is available on digital platforms from 6th July and DVD 20th July