If you've ever flipped on a TV in a hotel room in a country whose language you don't understand, you'll know what it's like to try to grasp for meaning when all the usual semantic signposts are gone.

In "Isle of Dogs," Wes Anderson's latest foray into finicky stop-motion animation, the language gap is between species. The film is set in a retro-future Japan, where the canine residents of the fictional city of Megasaki have been banished to an offshore rubbish dump as part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the cat-loving mayor of the metropolis.

Most of the citizens have been brainwashed by a propaganda campaign touting the dangers of dog flu and "snout fever," but the mayor's 12-year-old ward, Atari (voiced by newcomer Koyu Rankin), isn't one of them. Commandeering a small plane, he sets off to Trash Island to find his beloved dog, Spots, who was the first to be sent into exile.