This movie, as I was expecting from director Wes Anderson, is visually stunning. The artistic choices worked really great for me. The stop-motion is absolutely flawless, one of the best I've ever seen. The dedication to such a labor-intensive craft, that will look like CGI to many people, is admirable. Huge props to the animators!

The story, on the other hand, didn't excite me as I had hoped. While the premise was very interesting, I felt that the story could have take a better direction, narratively speaking. Some side plots felt useless and should have been skipped, while others could've been expanded a little bit more. The other dogs in the pack could have used some more lines, especially considering the A class actors that voiced them.

I really liked the idea of making the dogs speak English while the humans spoke undubbed Japanese. It really forced the viewer to sympathize more with the dogs, making the human world distant and cold (specially for people, like me, who are not adept to japanese culture).

I definitely did not like the deus ex machina at the end. The situation should have been resolved more elegantly.

In the end, it's a movie that could have been perfect, but the unremarkable(to me) development of the story keeps from being a truly masterpiece. Thankfully, Anderson's stylistic choices were spot on, appealing and just quirky enough. The jokes all work really well ( [spoiler] the recurring "rumor" gag was really funny [/spoiler]). The film flow quite well, with just the right runtime.

8/10

P.S.: go watch the "making of" of the sushi scene. Truly a gargantuan work for one of the best looking food scene in animation history.