Having played both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford will be enshrined in cinematic history forever. That said, one of the most recurring criticisms dogging the actor throughout his career is that he’s much more of a movie star than an actor, and the naysayers have a point.
His associations with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, along with Blade Runner and sequel 2049, Jack Ryan blockbusters Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, What Lies Beneath, The Fugitive, Air Force One, Working Girl and more gives him an impressive résumé that the majority of his peers could only dream of, but Ford also tends to be wildly inconsistent as both a draw and leading man when he tackles more challenging roles.
A recent case in point is The Call of the Wild, which partnered the grizzled veteran up with a poorly-rendered CGI dog for a $150 million adaptation of Jack London’s 1903 novel of the same name. A defiantly old school adventure story with a modern sheen, it’s perfectly fine for what it is, but it bombed hard at the box office because audiences failed to show much interest and decried the film as outdated from the onset.
Landing in February 2020, with the pandemic lurking just around the corner, didn’t help, but by the time the dust settled, The Call of the Wild reportedly lost Disney anywhere up to $100 million. It’s an undemanding and fitfully entertaining family film, though, which could explain FlixPatrol revealing that the former flop is currently surging on the Disney Plus most-watched list. It cracked the global top 50 streaming titles on the platform this week and made the top 10 in a couple of large markets, including India. Undoubtedly, the movie will ride that upward trend for at least a few more days.