I don’t know why you’re here reading a review of Charlie the Wonderdog, and I’m not going to judge. Thanks for stopping by and at least making this worthy my time. I hope you’re having a great day, wherever you are. Maybe you’re a child of above average intelligence who wants to know more about the film. You could be a parent wondering if it’s appropriate for children of a certain age, or if you’re going to be bored to death watching it. Maybe you want to know if Charlie the Wonderdog is some sort of animated classic waiting to be discovered or a horrific bomb that will spawn a thousand memes. I’m sorry to disappoint all of you who might’ve come for those reasons, but the truth is Charlie the Wonderdog is a whole lotta nothing. It’s not bad enough to be offensive, creative enough to be interesting, or anything at all worth talking about. It’s just there. It exists.
Young Danny (voiced by Dawson Littman) has been fast friends with his beloved pooch Charlie pretty much since birth. But Charlie is getting older, weaker, and slower in his old age, leaving Danny concerned that he might not be around much longer. Fate intervenes when a bratty young alien prince and his mother abduct a bunch of animals from across the galaxy to help find the kid a pet. Included in this batch of candidates are Charlie and the evil cat next door, Puddy. The kid can’t decide and starts genetically altering all of these animals and creatures to fit his liking, and mom gets so frustrated that she sends all of them back to their respective planets without rescinding any of the powers bestowed upon them. Suddenly, Charlie can talk (now voiced by Owen Wilson, warmly putting in a basic effort) and has all the abilities of a superhero. But the flip side is that Puddy (Ruari McDonald) is now a lot larger and bestowed with similar powers that he chooses to use for evil, making a play to take over the human world by using the DNA in his saliva to make all the fleshy oppressors into babbling, mindless kitties.
The first five minutes of Charlie the Wonderdog show a lot of promise. The relationship between Danny and the aging Charlie is bittersweet and poignantly presented. But once the aliens arrive and Charlie starts talking, everything falls into a predictable, familiar kiddie and superhero movie groove. The animation from director Shea Wageman and the team at Vancouver based ICON Creative Studios is functional; never exceptional, but never bad. There are some nice visual elements in the background that try to infuse a handmade element (the lettering on signs, scratches on the fence around Danny’s house), but mostly it’s all just… fine. There’s plenty of slapstick, a vaguely uplifting score, a theme song from Bryan Adams (long from his soundtrack heyday), and decently done shots of Charlie flying through the air. I’m really struggling to come up with positives. There’s a running gag that made me want tacos, and that night after watching the film, I had tacos. There. That’s something.
The script to Charlie the Wonderdog is a major drawback. It’s never more emotional than its opening, the dramatic tension is nonexistent, and none of the jokes are funny enough to generate even as much as a hearty smile. There’s a running gag about an opportunistic female president who’s obsessed with watching silly videos online. There are references to cancel culture, AI, and (in the film’s most cringeworthy bit) gender identity, which I think are supposed to appeal to adults, but instead come across as being more pandering than the kiddie movies elements are here. I probably would’ve liked Charlie the Wonderdog more if it didn’t even try to throw adults a bone at all. The jokes aren’t there to be snappy or irreverent. They’re just there so the film has some dialogue.
I don’t want it to sound like Charlie the Wonderdog is one of the worst things I’ve ever had to sit through, but rather that I’m at a loss for what to say about it. Even as background noise being used by babysitters and harried parents to keep a kid occupied or put them to sleep, one could do both way worse and much better. I kept waiting for Charlie the Wonderdog to be either impressive or odd and got neither. Even in its best moments, this is as bland as an animated movie can get; evaporating from memory while the whole thing is still unfolding. There are no big swings and only the safest of bets here. Sure, you could watch it and not be mad that you sat through it, or you could take a chance on the millions of other movies or activities you could be watching or doing with these ninety minutes. The choice is yours.
Charlie the Wonderdog opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, January 16, 2026.
