'Dog' review: Channing Tatum's sweet, but unfocused comedy-drama

Channing Tatum returns to acting after a five-year hiatus and makes his codirecting debut with "Dog," a road-trip comedy with a serious undercurrent. His co-star is a canine — well, if you want to be technical about it, multiple canines play the title role. Essentially, "Dog" is a two-hander: a man, and man’s best friend.

There’s box-office gold in that premise — movies, like Instagram accounts, always score big when pets are the focus — but "Dog" has a heart, too. Tatum plays Jackson Briggs, a former Army Ranger suffering from PTSD and barely making ends meet working at a sandwich shop. When a fellow Ranger dies by apparent suicide, Briggs meets the man’s now-ownerless dog, Lulu — another traumatized veteran. Briggs reluctantly agrees to drive Lulu across country to the funeral (she refuses to fly), thereby launching the two old soldiers on a series of adventures.

"Dog" may sound like a comedy, and it’s officially billed as such, but deep down this movie wants to be a drama. It’s inspired by an HBO documentary "War Dog: A Soldier’s Best Friend" from Tatum and longtime collaborator Reid Carolin, who codirects here and wrote the screenplay (working with a former soldier, Brett Rodriguez). That may explain why "Dog" takes the psychological toll of war so seriously and shows such deep respect for Lulu. She is very rarely played for laughs. Even when she poses as a seeing-eye dog to help Briggs score a free room in a posh hotel, her trauma resurfaces in a troubling way.

Ultimately, "Dog" can’t quite find its footing. It hinges on some broadly drawn characters, such as a paranoid pot grower (former wrestler Kevin Nash) and his psychic wife (Jane Adams), but also some very realistic ones, such as Noah (Ethan Suplee), a veteran trying to rebuild a life with his family. Meanwhile, Tatum plays Briggs a little too cool-and-breezy; he’s less a snarling misfit than a friendly stray. Briggs is so affable, in fact, that we sometimes wonder what his problems are.

That brings up a major question: What exactly happened to Briggs and Lulu in the war? (For that matter, which war did they serve in? The movie doesn’t make it crystal clear.) Since we’re given few if any details, we're left to sympathize with these soldiers mostly on principle. A little additional back story might have made both of them more compelling.

All told, "Dog" fares about as well as "Max" (2015), another solider-dog story with good intentions but uneven results. It does have several strong moments, and it manages to build to a moving conclusion. Though not quite a must-see, "Dog" is warm and fuzzy enough to merit a look.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com