Eat Pray Bark Review: Five dog owners arrive with their pups to get to know their canine companion better but, instead find themselves at an intensive training camp in the Tyrolean Alps.
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Eat Pray Bark Netflix Cast
Alexandra Maria Lara, Rúrik Gíslason, Devid Striesow, Anna Herrmann, Doğa Gürer, Kerim Waller, Brigitte Kren, Martin Leutgeb, Yvonne Yung Hee Bormann
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Eat Pray Bark Movie Director
Marco Petry
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Eat Pray Bark 2026 Writers
Jane Ainscough, Marco Petry, Hortense Ullrich
The film has a runtime of around 91 minutes.
Eat Pray Bark Review
In Marco Petry’s ensemble drama, viewers are taken on a journey of self-discovery after a bunch of strangers and their dogs arrive at an intensive training retreat in the Tyrolean mountains. Of course, we soon learn that the dogs are not the problem; it’s the volatile owners who are driving their pets to insanity… of course. Among several characters, our protagonist is a dog-hating politician who adopts a dog to save her image, but the narrative focuses on almost everyone, giving us a rundown of different people coming to terms with their issues.
The film is quite obvious from the get-go. We know this is going to be a journey in which these characters confront their demons and come to terms with their past to fix their present and future. The plot’s obviousness, however, doesn’t really matter in the film because it’s quite happy being an obvious entertainer with a paper-thin plot that is okay with using animals to tell us human beings’ stories.
As the ensemble cast uses the dog training metaphor to showcase human flaws and emotional baggage, the film struggles to be anything more than surface-level. The film is mostly a comedy, disguising the more serious topics behind funny situations with the pups. However, the comedic and satirical angle doesn’t always land because not much of the story has anything to do with depth.
The performances are fine, for the most part. Honestly, there’s only so much the actors can do when their characters are so one-dimensional. Rurik Gislason as Nodon is enjoyable in bursts, but he can get very overwhelming for both the characters and the viewers. Either way, the beautiful locales of the Tyrolean Alps do most of the heavy lifting and watching the pups run through the natural beauty and miles of open land will make your heart happy.
One can say that the settings are a visual distraction to how paper-thin the plot and characters are… and they won’t be wrong. The visual appeal is one of its biggest strengths; everything else fades to the back. I think once you see some of the film, you will be able to see the ending from a mile away, as things move on at a steady, familiar pace. The exploration of human behaviour through their pets’ behaviour is something that has been done many times in other (better) films, and, thus, this one just seems unnecessary at this point.
The biggest problem might be the lack of emotional depth, which is a must-have for these projects. It’s difficult to root for anyone because there’s not a lot to go on, leaving us to look at the animals and hope for the best. The humans remain archetypes that need to follow a path to be fixed, and it doesn’t help with the emotions that viewers are supposed to have in these films.
Final Thoughts
Eat Pray Bark is fine, mostly because it has a lot of cute dogs, and the location is excellent. However, there’s not much to hold on to in terms of emotion, and it’s hard to root for characters who have not been properly established. Overall, this is a pleasant, albeit shallow, experience.
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