Stream It Or Skip It: ‘White Fang’ On Netflix, An Animated Version Of Jack London’s Classic Novel

When an animated version of White Fang, an international production that involved producers in the U.S., France, Luxembourg and elsewhere, debuted at Sundance earlier this year, Netflix snapped up the family film. It debuts this week, with some familiar voices as stars and an interesting animation style. Will fans of the Jack London novel appreciate the first animated version?

WHITE FANG: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The movie starts off with a dog fight. A half-wolf, half-dog named White Fang, “The Terror of the Yukon,” is fighting against two other dogs. His owner, Beauty Smith (Paul Giamatti), prods him into the match by threatening him with his cane, as usual. But you can see in White Fang’s eyes that he’s not a fighter. He lays down, and all of a sudden we hear shots. Enter Marshal Weedon Scott (Nick Offerman), who puts a stop to the fight. But he’s knocked out by Smith, and he collapses on top of White Fang, gripping on to the dog as he lays unconscious.

We then cut to the beginning of White Fang’s journey to that point at Fort Yukon, from a pup who gets separated from his mother to a guide dog taking him under her wing, to his time in an Inuit tribe leading the sled of the tribe’s chief, Grey Beaver (Eddie Spears). When Grey Beaver goes to Fort Yukon to sell mittens in order to secure his tribe’s current location, Smith forces him to sell White Fang so Smith can force the wolf-dog to fight and make a lot of money.

After Marshal Scott rescues him, they both recover at Scott’s house, where the marshal’s wife Maggie (Rashida Jones) helps White Fang get used to life with people who mean him no harm.

 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Well, maybe the other film versions of White Fang. But also any film where much of the story is told from an animal’s perspective, with very little dialogue.

Performance Worth Watching: Jones as Maggie doesn’t get screen time until the last third of the movie, but she conveys the strength of her character the same way she conveys the strength of all of her live-action characters. This is important because the animation of the human characters leaves a lot to be desired (see below).

Memorable Dialogue: When Grey Beaver sells White Fang’s adopted mother, Kiche, to a trapper in order to trap in a new territory, he says to the sad wolf-dog, “The time for mothers is over. This is how it feels to be grown.”

Single Best Shot: White Fang looks out over the valley near Weedon Smith’s house and sees this amazing view:

What Age Group Is This For?: While the film cuts out most of the violence from London’s story, the circle of life cannot be denied. It’s also rated TV-PG, likely because one character says the word “hell” once. It’s the type of movie that you could show in parts to kids from 5-10, but the entire movie is most appropriate for kids 10 and above.

Our Take: This is the first animated version of White Fang, and when you watch it, it makes you wonder why it hasn’t been animated before. Maybe because CGI is the best way to render the spectacular vistas of the Yukon, and it would have never looked right in a hand-drawn version. But it also lets director Alexandre Espigares have more freedom in how to depict White Fang’s upbringing.

The screenplay, as we said earlier, changes things around from Jack London’s 1906 novel. Much of the more violent and now-racially inappropriate parts of the story are removed; Scott is now a married marshal and not a single gold prospector. The entire ending of the book isn’t there, either. Finally, there’s a cringeworthy scene where we see how cruel Beauty Smith needs to be in order to break White Fang down and get him to fight, but otherwise much of the hardship that White Fang was subjected to in the book has been smoothed down or eliminated.

What’s left is a movie that doesn’t have a ton of action to propel it along. Ironically, the film moves the most when there’s little to no dialogue, when White Fang and Kiche traverse the snowy Yukon hoping to survive. White Fang’s time with Grey Beaver is also well done, showing how White Fang matured and found his true home.

The animation style is semi-realistic, as the characters are drawn with computerized brushstrokes that make them look like they’re from a Thomas Kinkade painting. It works well with the animals, but the human characters — likely animated via motion capture — look stiff and creepy, and the mouths move so oddly that it sometimes doesn’t match the dialogue. Beauty Smith is especially scary looking, even more so than his evil character should be, considering this is ostensibly a kids movie; however, Giamatti leans into the role with a scenery chewing vigor that he hasn’t had since playing Pig Vomit in Private Parts.

Fans of Parks and Recreation will be happy to hear banter between Offerman and Jones — imagine Ron Swanson and Ann Perkins in love on the Western frontier! — but that’s not enough to salvage the human portion of this film.

Our Call: Stream It. Despite its flaws, White Fang is a mostly sweet story about survival in the wild and has a clear hero-villain dynamic that most kids can get into. And, let’s face it — puppy White Fang is pretty dang cute to watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Where to stream White Fang