Channing Tatum’s shaggy road trip story Dog is now in cinemas

Look at Channing Tatum’s face—that chiselled jaw and those soulful eyes could tame any savage beast. Well, almost any, as the trailer for his buddy-comedy Dog proves below.

The road trip movie is co-directed by Tatum himself, who stars as a mentally-scarred soldier forced to wrangle an unruly Belgian Shepherd to its owner’s cross-country funeral. Dog is now sitting and staying in Australian cinemas, just the right blend of heart and humour to entertain you this weekend.

The human-canine chemistry is already off to a sweet start in the scenes we can watch below. Although army vet Jackson and the destructive doggo Lulu don’t get along at first, there’s clearly common ground between them, both experiencing some deal of trauma from their military service.

“She’s never slept in a nice bed before”, a caring stranger explains to Tatum, shortly after we see him comforting Lulu in the middle of a thunderstorm. You’re definitely going to come back from seeing this movie and sweep your own pet up in a big grateful hug.

We published a highly educational piece on all the lessons man can learn from man’s best friend, and Rory Doherty reckons the main takeaway from Dog is that our pets can help ease our existential pain. Not sure what that has to do with the wacky scene he describes here:

“At one point [Jackson] pretends to be a blind soldier to score a fancy hotel room for free…until his “guide dog” breaks away and attacks a Muslim doctor at the hotel, landing Jackson in jail for fraud and an alleged hate crime.” So…don’t let your best canine buddy trick you into any accidental hate crimes, but go wild and enjoy Dog apart from that.