Soon after being adopted from a litter, Enzo, a golden retriever puppy, becomes captivated by his new owner Denny’s (Milo Ventimiglia) profession as a racecar driver. Through incessant internal monologues, Enzo (voiced, in raspy dulcet tones, by Kevin Costner) details his fascination with the racetrack and watching old races on TV. It’s as if he’s already taken on the identity of his master, and after the pooch watches a documentary on Mongolia and discovers that dogs who’ve learned all they need to will be reincarnated into human form, his desire to become a real boy is made explicit when he asserts, “My soul just felt more human.” It’s the sort of simplistic anthropomorphization that’s become a hackneyed trope in numerous Hollywood dog-centric films, wherein dogs are presented just like humans, except for their absence of opposable thumbs and the ability to talk out loud.
Simon Curtis’s The Art of Racing in the Rain is at its best when Costner’s earnest voiceover accompanies Enzo’s more lighthearted observations about his distressing encounters with a misshapen plush zebra and what he sees as his human’s very strange routines. But all too often, Enzo’s thoughts suggest little more than trite greeting-card messages. And as time begins to pass at an ever-brisk clip and Denny courts and later marries Eve (Amanda Seyfried), has a child, and works tirelessly to build a career as a Formula One racer, Enzo is left as a mere portal through which the audience views a frightfully rote human melodrama that eventually encompasses both a battle with cancer and a lengthy child custody battle.
As Denny confronts one challenge after another, Enzo grows from a cute puppy into a frequently insufferable self-help guru, spouting metaphorical musings that draw comparisons between racing and life and urging his master to stay balanced and composed as he prepares to contend with life’s unknown obstacles. Though it occasionally acknowledges the sense of helplessness that Enzo feels as a dog unable to talk his human owners through their emotional hurdles, the film doesn’t develop a compelling through line from this eternal disconnect between two species. Instead, Enzo’s uniquely canine perspective is often pushed to the background as the film explores what trite platitudes it can traffic through its baldly manipulative human storyline. As such, Enzo ends up feeling not like a loyal best friend, but a motivational speaker who’s stuck being the cheerleader on the sidelines of someone else’s life.
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