Written and Directed by: Various
Welcome back for the second entry in this year’s Dog Days of Summer series, the special time of year when I talk about terrible family-friendly dog movies. After covering the first movie of the Alpha and Omega series last week, I figure now would be a good time to get the entire rest of the series out of the way. Hopefully, there won’t be any more of these things and this can be my final thoughts on the series, and its been a few years since the 8th movie was released, so maybe we can all relax. Save that for the end though, because now I’m going to tell you about the rest of these movies. Calling them movies may be a bit of a stretch, because, in an act of sweet mercy, all these productions are 45 minutes max. I’d prefer that they were 0 minutes, but I’ll take what I can get. For time’s sake, I will limit each review to one paragraph and include an image from each film that I think is representative of the overall movie. Let’s get started!
Alpha and Omega 2: A Howl-iday Adventure
In this Christmas adventure, we completely change the entire, already pretty thin, premise of the series by instantly introducing three new central characters in the clumsiest way possible. These children of Kate and Humphrey, Claudette, Runt, and Stinky, are then immediately attacked by King, the leader of a pack of ‘rogue wolves’ (who we know nothing about) so that this rogue wolf pack can kill all the leaders of the Western Wolf Pack and establish an ‘All-Alpha’ Wolf Pack. I think? This movie is 40 minutes of absolutely nothing, followed by 3 minutes of grown wolves threatening to kill and cannibalize the small wolf, Runt, followed by 1 minute of King talking about maintaining ‘Alpha Purity’ in a way that is uncomfortably reminiscent of racial purity. Oh also at the end there’s 30 seconds of Christmas related “fun”. It’s telling that the very first sequel is already so bereft of new ideas that they recycle entire sequences from the first movie. Also, the animation is considerably lower quality.
Alpha and Omega 3: The Great Race
In an adventure that shares no continuity with the previous Christmas “fun”, our pups Stinky, Runt, and Claudette are back to compete in the Great Race against the wolf pups of other packs, which is a bit less intense than the earlier stories about cannibalism and politics. Things heat up quickly when Claudette takes a liking to a wolf pup from another valley, Fleet, but Fleet’s father forbids friendship because he’s still traumatized from losing the Great Race when he was a pup. This wolf is so upset that he almost beats his child, on-screen and in front of everyone present, because Fleet lost one of the many races. And, in an ending that would make Ayn Rand violently ill, Claudette throws the race so everyone can tie and become friends. This one’s a little better than 2, the jokes are still awful but there are some messages about friendship and multiculturalism that I can appreciate.
Alpha and Omega: The Legend Of Sawtooth Cave (They stopped numbering them)
Every cartoon series needs a horror entry, and this is it for us because this is about a ghost in Sawtooth Cave! When Runt realizes that the Alpha pups get all the praise, opportunity, and room for growth, he gets understandably jealous and decides to check out the supposedly haunted Sawtooth Cave before meeting some aggressively annoying porcupines. The joke is that they talk like cliche California Valley girls, and these porcupines are from the Eastern Valley, so they’re VALLEY GIRLS. GET IT. LAUGH. Don’t worry, if you aren’t laughing now they’ll come back and do the bit again. Aside from that, I like the attempt at spooky atmosphere, and this is the only entry in the series where having the plot be about ableist infanticide feels appropriate. Oh, and just to be clear, that is what this ghost story is about; ableism, infanticide, and murder! Happy Halloween kids!
Alpha And Omega : Family Vacation
I want to make something clear. I ribbed the 2-4, but they had occasional moments approaching quality. Someone behind the scenes wanted to make something good. That person gave up, because from here on out this series is irredeemable, starting with Alpha and Omega 5, which is a clip show. While on vacation with their pups, Kate and Humphrey retrace the steps of the adventure that made them realize their love for each other. So not only is this a beat for beat retelling of the earlier movies, but there are also NINE SEPARATE FLASHBACK SEQUENCES just in case you were unclear about what happened earlier. This is pointless because the only reason you would be watching this movie is if you were an Alpha and Omega aficionado, this entry is just to squeeze another DVD purchase out of clueless parents. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of original content, like when everyone has to sing to help a bear cub pee, and NO I will not explain the context of that sentence!
Alpha And Omega : Dino Digs
In the most divisive Alpha and Omega movie yet, the wolf pack moves to the ‘suburbs’, a golf course-side artificial cave, because they keep getting involved in adventures with wolves who want them all dead. Instead, the group comes across a dinosaur teleported to the modern times after she, and another dino, wandered into a mystical beam of light moments before the meteor struck Earth and ended the age of dinosaurs. Together, they all need to stop a possibly Native American man from such heinous acts as digging up dinosaur bones and selling them to a museum so he can enrich his community. Oh no, what a monster. Thank god there was no dinosaur here to stop them from building a goddamn golf course, or else there wouldn’t have been any story at all! This movie is so insane and nonsensical that I am considering making it a separate full review because I have described maybe one percent of the bizarre stuff that happened. Also, this one was the only sequel that my wife Maria watched with me and she offers this as her review: “It’s terrible, don’t watch it.”
Alpha and Omega: The Big Fur-eeze
What a letdown. After the balls to the walls insanity of Dino Digs, we’re stuck back with another stupid story about how the pups need to find their parents who, this time, ventured out into the frozen wilderness looking for food, because half the animals in the valley have died, and don’t worry, I didn’t make that number up, the grandparent wolves tell the kids how everyone has died from cold. This is essentially a remake of Alpha and Omega 2: Howl-iday adventure because the whole plot becomes about the rogue wolf King trying to capture, kill, and cannibalize the wolf pups who have thwarted him on so many occasions. The only two slightly interesting things that happen are when Humphrey uses a Jedi Mind Trick to convince a bear to go to sleep (he just does it and it works, let’s move on) and when someone makes a “Who Let The Dogs Out” reference in the year of our lord 2016. Also at the end of the movie, they go home and celebrate Christmas so I guess this was another holiday adventure!
Alpha and Omega: Journey To The Bear Kingdom
Finishing up the direct to video sequels to Alpha and Omega, we have the final tale wherein the pups befriend the Bear Princess, the daughter of the Bear King and Queen who are locked in a struggle with their treacherous generals who’ve made an alliance with the rogue wolves. The pups decide they need to help the Bear monarchs because, well, if they’re the god-given rulers they must be qualified, and I’m sorry but I cannot sit idly by any longer. I am a free American and we fought a whole war to not have to answer to any of these self-important monarchs who think that their bloodline gives them the right to make executive decisions on behalf of everyone else. They live high on the hog and have parades and get adulation, but then what? They make it everyone else’s problem when they get betrayed by obviously evil advisors. There’s a simple solution to this, No Gods, No Kings! No Gods, No Kings! NO GODS NO KINGS. NO GODS NO KINGS. NO GODS NO KINGS. Oh, uh, it ends with the pups saving the day and everyone goes home as friends.
Can This Be The End? Please?
Thank you for joining me on this journey to the end of the Alpha and Omega franchise. If I’m really lucky, that means this series is well and truly over and my articles here will be my last word on the subject. If this is not clear already, I would definitely not recommend watching any of these movies, they’re mostly just tortuous retreads of material that wasn’t good in the first place. Even the most interesting one, Dino Digs, is more painful than funny, and I can’t in good conscience tell anyone to subject themselves to these. I do find this series more interesting as an oddity though, the original movie didn’t make a ton of money, so did any of these sequels really get the kind of viewership they needed to keep this series going? Were these movies a front? On second thought, as long as I don’t need to watch any more, I don’t wanna know. Thank you for joining me for the completion of the Alpha and Omega series, I’ll have another bizarre dog movie to talk about next week, and as always, if you have a suggestion please leave it in the comments.
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