Director Lasse Hallstrom is either the greatest squandered talent working today or a thoroughly pedestrian director who happened to make a couple of great, singular films (eg. “My Life As A Dog” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”). At any rate, the director has dabbled in a variety of safe, mainstream genres, and despite earning three Academy Award nominations, seems quite content directing fairly conventional pictures these days.
In the late ’90s and early aughts, the director developed a very strong working relationship with the Weinsteins and became their go-to guy for a good handful of middle-of-the-road, Oscar baiting films like “Chocolat,” “The Cider House Rules” and “Shipping News” that were workmanlike, if slight fare. As the new millenium continued, Hallstrom stuck with Miramax and Walt Disney, even though the Weinsteins had left, directing films with even greater diminishing returns like “An Unfinished Life,” “Casanova” and “The Hoax.”
It’s been three years since his last film, and his latest project, the family friendly remake of a Japanese film, “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story,” looks like a paycheck gig. The film is produced by Sony Pictures’ sub-label Stage 6 Films, a division that acquires, produces and distributes a good handful of low budget ($1 million-$10 million) films per year, with a good portion of them ending up going the straight-to-DVD route. And it looks like Hallstrom’s film is one of them.
While Sony has turned a couple of Stage 6 Films you might have heard of – “Moon” and the execrable “Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Day” – into modest box office success stories, we don’t entirely blame them here. The film, about a man who adopts a dog who develops such a strong bond with his master that he continues to wait for him to come home after work, even after he dies (and no, we didn’t spoil anything, that’s all in the trailer below) looks like pure schmaltz. While it boasts Richard Gere, Joan Allen and Jason Alexander in the cast, when was the last time any of them lit up the box office? Hallstrom and Gere’s “The Hoax” grossed only a mere $7 million at the box office, and for a time seemed destined to go straight-to-DVD itself after having its release date bumped quite a few times. This film looks and feels like a cable special so we can see why Sony aren’t going to bother with a theatrical rollout for this one. That said, given its wholesome family, feel good, warm fuzzies nature, according to this trade magazine ad, Sony is giving the film a big push to faith based markets, and we have no doubt they’ll eat up this kind of stuff up.
“Hachiko: A Dog’s Story” hits DVD and BluRay on March 9th, 2010. But don’t worry about Hallstrom, his Nicholas Sparks adapted “Dear John” starring human drywall Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfriend gets a proper theatrical release by Sony’s Screengems on February 5th, 2010. But you’ll probably wish it had gone straight-to-DVD too.
