Swifty the Arctic Fox works in the mailroom of the Arctic Blast Delivery Service, but he has much bigger dreams. He yearns to become a Top Dog, the Arctic's star husky couriers. To prove he can do it, he commandeers one of the sleds and delivers a mysterious package to a secret location. Once there, he stumbles on a hidden fortress overseen by the nefarious Otto Von Walrus. The blubbery evil genius commands an army of oddly polite puffin henchmen. Swifty discovers Otto Von Walrus' villainous plan to drill beneath the snow-packed surface to unleash masses of ancient gas to melt the Arctic and become the world's supreme ruler. To stop this sinister scheme, Swifty enlists the help of his friends: Polar bear, a neurotic polar bear, Lemmy, a scatterbrained albatross, Jade Fox, a brainy red fox engineer, Leopold and Bertha, two conspiracy theorist otters and Magda, his curmudgeonly caribou boss.
Anjelica Huston as Magda, a formally short-tempered Russian-accented caribou and Swifty's boss.
James Franco as Lemmy, a scatterbrained albatross.
Omar Sy as Leopold, a French-accented conspiracy theorist otter.
Michael Madsen as Duke, a Husky employed by Arctic Blast Delivery Service.
Laurie Holden as Dakota, another Husky employed by the Arctic Blast Delivery Service.
Donny Falsetti as Dusty, another Husky employed by the Arctic Blast Delivery Service.
Nina Senicar as Countdown Inka, the countdown voice of Otto's machine.
Aaron Woodley as Puffins, Otto Van Walrus' henchmen. One said, "Alright guys, that's it! We're out of here!"
Soraya Azzabi as Alma.
Jason Deline as "Nasty" Naz Narwhal, a weather reporter who is possibly a narwhal.
Release
Arctic Dogs was released on November 1, 2019, in both Canada and the United States.
Reception
Box office
In the United States and Canada, Arctic Dogs was released alongside Harriet, and Motherless Brooklyn, and was projected to gross $5–10 million from 2,835 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $700,000 on its first day, and ended up debuting to just $2.9 million, finishing 10th and marking the worst opening of all-time for a film playing in over 2,800 theaters.
Critical response
Arctic Dogs was critically panned. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 13% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 3.09/10. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 28 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 64% and a 41% "definite recommend."
