Isle of Dogs

****

GLASGOW Film Festival let the dogs out for its opening gala last night with a Wes Anderson tale so charming it will make cats hiss with jealousy.

The Fantastic Mr Fox and Moonrise Kingdom director has proved a best friend to the festival in the past, giving Glasgow the UK premiere of The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014. He has now done the same with this animated caper set in a Japan of the future. What a gloomy look ahead it is.

Dogs, struck down with flu, have become public enemy number one.

Exiled to Trash Island by the mayor, the former pampered pets are left to fend for themselves.

Everyone seems to have forgotten them, everyone, that is, except a 12-year-old boy looking for his beloved dog, Spots.

Is Spots still alive? Will science find a cure for snout fever? And is that really Bryan “Breaking Bad” Cranston playing a mutt called Chief? Cranston is a new addition to the cast of Anderson regulars which includes Ed Norton and Bill Murray.

But he settles right in, waxing sarcastically with the rest of the pack of hounds that lend a paw to young Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin) in his search for his pal Spots.

You’ll also recognise the voices of a certain Frances McDormand, Bafta darling for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, and others. Cock an ear the right way and you might even pick up Yoko Ono, playing a scientist’s assistant.

The stop motion animation is a treat for eyes tiring of Pixar’s picture perfect sleekness and just to show he can, the story contains some nods to Kurosawa.

Anderson can be an acquired taste, with many adoring his whimsical ways and others finding him insufferably twee.

Isle of Dogs is no return to the cutting wit of Rushmore or the elegance of The Royal Tenenbaums.

While it makes a few sharp points about politicians whipping up hysteria and man’s treatment of animals, this is unashamedly a waggy dog story in praise of mutts, funny, exciting, with a few moments of peril just to keep the audience of young and not so young cinemagoers on their toes.

For all good boys and girls on its official release at the end of March.

glasgowfilm.org/festival