Dog Days (2024)

Adopt, don't shop!

Dog Days was a sweet, heartwarming-if predictable-tail of people being made more human by the love of a dog. The sight of four-legged sunshine aka a Golden Retriever, was enough to help me stick with this film through a ruff intro. (I promise to keep the puns to a minimum.)

Landlord Min Sang hates dogs, dog poo, and the veterinary clinic renting space in his building. When he’s not threatening to kick Jin Yeong out, he works at a company attempting to land the bid for a new resort going up. Retired architect Min Seo lives alone, her only company her dog Wanda. A delivery boy becomes entwined in her life when she has a health issue. Jeong Ah and Seon Yong have recently adopted a little girl named Ji Yoo. They are concerned with how to make their new family work as Ji Yoo keeps to herself. A band has lost their lead singer and Hyeon his girlfriend when she left for a job in Africa. All Hyeon has left is her Golden Retriever named Sting and her ex-boyfriend Daniel who has visitation rights.

Ostensibly this film highlights the roles dogs play in our lives and the value of adopting them. But surprisingly, they also showed the joy of adopting a human child, something rarely talked about in Korean entertainment (at least positively) as adoption isn’t common for a variety of reasons. Child actress Yoon Chae Na once again convinced me that Korean child actors are the gold standard. She gave a heart tugging performance. Kim Yoon Jin was believable as the mother seeking to connect to the little angel that had come into their lives.

Aside from the adoption story I really enjoyed the aging architect played by Youn Yuh Jung and her relationship with the delivery boy Jin Woo as portrayed by Tang Jun Sang. It was a tropey mentor bit, but well executed. I judged the character Hyeon rather harshly early on when he only grudgingly took the Golden in and made numerous mistakes. Fortunately, they quickly rectified those issues. It’s always a delight to see Kim Seo Hyung in a lighter role and she was sublime as the veterinarian with a heart of gold and questionable hygiene habits.

While the film dipped its paws into doggy melodrama it managed to avoid pandering for a tear fest. There were forced resolutions and too quick personality turnarounds. The best moments were the ones that were organic to the story and felt natural. The humor was generally gentle and the dog poop jokes were kept to a minimum. They did showcase the desperate need for adoption to save dogs lives advocating to adopt not shop. And of course, they also presented how rewarding adopting a child can be. Though I struggled with the first part of the film, I found it to be entertaining overall. Some stories were stronger than others. Could I recommend this film to a dog lover? Pawsitively.

24 July 2026

Trigger warnings: For sensitive dog lovers-Three dog in danger scenes-one illness, one lost pup running down a crowded street, and a euthanasia scene. Unlike another dog film I’ve watched, thankfully no physical abuse of the animals.

Rating note: This would normally be a 7.5 on my rating scale as the beginning was slow, but Sting/Floyd and Wanda won me over, bumping the score up by .5

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