To be honest, I kept passing by Dog Gone on Netflix ever since it came out on January 13. The thumbnail looked boring, the preview looked boring, the description was boring. It just didn’t look like a movie I would enjoy. But I’m a reviewer so I finally put on my big girl pants and turned it on.

Fielding Marshall (Johnny Berchtold) is in his senior year of college. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he adopts a dog named Gonker. When graduation rolls around, Fielding misses the ceremony because he lost track of time camping with his dog. Needless to say, his parents, John (Rob Lowe) and Ginny (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), are not happy. Fielding and Gonker move back to the Marshall home to try to figure out what to do with their life. While hiking with his college buddy, Nate (Nick Peine), Gonker chases a fox and gets lost. Fielding and John spend the next couple of weeks together searching for their dog.

If you are looking for a movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat, Dog Gone is not it. Instead, you will find a heartfelt drama that is based on a true story. While the search for Gonker drives the plot, it’s the strained relationship between Fielding and his father that is the core of the movie. As such, I found Dog Gone to be fairly dull. The parts that I found most interesting were the parts involving Fielding’s mother, Ginny, and her past relationship with her parents and the dog that she briefly owned. Those were the parts that made me teary-eyed. Not the testosterone-filled “Let’s not talk about anything” men. They were actually kinda annoying.

I would have preferred if Dog Gone was told from Gonker’s point of view, like Homeward Bound. It also would have made the title a little more appropriate. Yes, it’s the name of the book that the movie is based on but it still feels disingenuous. The Search for Gonker or Where Has My Dog Gone? would have been better titles. Anyway, I didn’t like the movie but I didn’t hate it either. It just needs more dog.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 - Mostly because Gonker is a good dog and the credits are filled with pictures of the cast and crew with their pets.