It’s hard to know what, exactly, the creative impetus is for Arthur The King. One would think it’s obvious, given how the marketing has placed Arthur the dog front and center. The film is named after the dog. The memoir upon which the film is based is about the transformative meeting with this dog. It seems clear that this should be a story about a dog! So it’s baffling to realize that the dog is almost an afterthought. Instead, it’s yet another star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg to unconvincingly sell himself as a likable everyman.
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Wahlberg stars as washed-up adventure racer Michael Light (based on memoir author Mikael Lindnord), a man so obsessed with winning his races that he ignored the needs and advice of his teammates, sabotaging their chances of securing a spot at the top of the podium. Desperate for one last shot at victory, he assembles a team to attempt one last race through the Dominican Republic, where they will need to hike, bike, climb, zipline, and kayak their way to victory.
This dream team consists solely of stock characters, each of whom has a single character trait to contribute to the group dynamic. Simu Liu is an Instagram-obsessed influencer who (rightly) understands that sponsors don’t just shell out money for racers to appear as little more than tracking dots on a map. Nathalie Emmanuel is running solely to appease her terminally ill legend of a father, a character forgotten by the time the climax rolls around. Ali Suliman has a bad knee. That’s his whole thing, and it hardly seems to be much of a hindrance. These characters don’t exist to grow and change through adversity, nor do they enable Wahlberg’s Michael to grow and change into anything more than a prestige-driven jerk. They’re merely here for Wahlberg to show off his abilities as a leader and averter of disaster, showcasing benevolence that reads more as reinforcement of star persona and personal ego than a character undergoing an arc.
Notably absent from this summary is Arthur, who doesn’t meet up with the racers until about halfway through the film. The film seems to recognize this is a flaw for a titular inciting incident, so the front half is littered with cross-cutting shots of the dog in a homeless struggle, as if playing to an audience of Homers desperately asking “Where’s Poochie?” But even when Arthur does unite with the racers and save them from wandering off a cliff in the middle of the night, any focus on the dog feels token at best, as if the film begrudgingly laments its entire reason to exist.
This is largely due to a failure to develop a relationship between Michael and Arthur that feels like an actual connection, rather than the artificial machinations of a script outline. Simon Cellan Jones’ eye as a director never manages to effectively personify Arthur to transform him into a character with readable emotions, and Wahlberg’s usual weaknesses as an actor are only magnified when forced to charm with a canine scene partner. It’s never convincing that a starving Arthur following the team for the occasional meatball encourages such instantaneous loyalty from Michael that he may be willing to sacrifice victory for the dog’s wellbeing. That failure of storytelling makes the sick-dog climax—a layup for easy empathy points if there ever was one—completely miss the mark.
So if the point is not the dog, then for what possible reason should one watch Arthur The King? Well, for as stock and one-note as the characters can be, there is at least something genuinely thrilling about watching people compete in an adventure race. It’s easy to get sucked into the gorgeous jungle vistas or caught up in the tension of a malfunctioning zipline. But even then, the experience is hampered by abundant dubbed dialogue that either places no faith in the filmmakers’ abilities as visual storytellers or in the audience’s attention span. Probably both.
If one wants to watch extreme sports and survivalist challenges, there is no shortage of clips showcasing real athletes in similarly gorgeous climates doing the exact things simulated in this film. The draw here should be experiencing a story, seeing characters overcoming adversity, and watching them build a bond with an adorable pupper. Yet Arthur The King demonstrates incompetence at doing all three. Only one thing to say to that: Woof.
Arthur the King opens in theaters on March 15, 2024