Eat Pray Bark Parent Guide

Nodon (Rúrik Gíslason) runs an exclusive dog-training resort in the picturesque Tyrolean alps, and he has five new guests, along with their pets and problems.

Ursula (Alexandra Maria Lara) is there in disguise and under duress – she’s a politician who got caught on a live mic ranting about her hatred of dogs. To rehabilitate her image, she’s picked up Brenda, a rowdy pooch who’s wrecking her apartment. Babs (Anna Herrmann) is accompanied by her massive, exuberant dog, Torsten, who is inclined to trouble like sewage is to smell. If she can’t get his behavior under control, she might have to give him up. Ziggy (Doga Gürer) gets along wonderfully with his dog Gaga – but Gaga despises Ziggy’s husband, Helmut (Devid Striesow). Finally, the quiet, brooding, and angry Hakan (Kerim Waller) has his German Shephard, Roxy, in a muzzle, and from the way she’s been barking, no one is too keen to take it off. Nodon clearly has his work cut out for him. 

For English viewers, the first thing you’ll notice is that the dub track for this movie is, in a word, wretched. It doesn’t even sound like AI; rather it makes me think of an alien making what it thinks are human conversation sounds, but it’s distinctly off-putting. I made it about 10 minutes into the movie before switching to the original German audio with English subtitles. This didn’t fix any of the issues with the script, but it did prevent me from trying to swallow my own tongue to get out of listening to the subsequent 80 minutes. 

The next thing you might notice is a general lack of profanity, drinking, violence, and sexual content. Two cuss words, an unfinished glass of wine with dinner, and a few little nips from a small dog about sum up the movie – oh, and I suppose there’s Nodon, who seems to have an allergy to shirts. 

Family-suitability notwithstanding, Eat, Pray, Bark is a pretty flat experience. When you’re not listening to the petty bickering between Ziggy and Helmut, you’ll see Nodon stride into a mountain clearing with his abs glistening in the sun. I’ll concede that the dogs are cute, and while it may be both goofy and trite, the story is earnest and largely inoffensive. Maybe I should have tried watching it in German without the English subtitles. 

About author

Keith Hawkes

Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.