Year Of The Dog
“The title is so appropriate because it felt like it took seven times as long to watch it than it actually did.”
It’s a bad sign when the only memorable quote from a movie is actually a one line review of the movie that a buddy of mine blurted out as we were leaving. (Check out his review soon at urbanpollution.)
Mike White has, in general, been good to us. He wrote School Of Rock, The Good Girl, a few episodes of “Freaks And Geeks” and Chuck & Buck. And he turned in a couple of good performances in some of those. (We’ll leave Nacho Libre out of this list for his sake.)
So the fact that he got to direct his own script this time out should be no surprise to anyone. Why not? He’s a good writer, so let him direct. See what happens!
Well, unfortunately, this happens:
Peggy (Molly Shannon) is so boring that she named her little beagle Pencil. When he dies, she breaks down. He was the only love that she had in her life, and now he’s gone. But from this could she possibly get a relationship with her next door neighbor (John C. Reilly)? Or maybe the guy at the vet who loves animals (Peter Sarsgaard)? Maybe her friend (Regina King) will start to respect her a little more. Maybe something will actually happen in her life!
Or maybe we’ll just be caught in a theatre for an hour and a half watching the lives of really boring people as they pass by. Peggy is one of the most boring characters to come along in quite a while. Watching her live her downward spiral of a life as she becomes more and more of an animal activist was about as fun as watching videos of chickens getting slaughtered. But at least there’s some action in those. Year Of The Dog didn’t have any of that until the last ten minutes. And by then it seemed pretty pointless.
I’m ok with movies where not much happens. Hell, try describing the plot of Lawrence Of Arabia. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
No, I won’t. I’ll keep skewering this movie. It’s more fun.
The performances were ok, but, since the actors weren’t given any real characters, there wasn’t much to work with. Peter was not so ambiguously gay. John was a boorish guy who loved to hunt. Regina was in love with her cheating man. These are not characters. They’re sketches of characters. And I didn’t care about any of them. I didn’t care about Peggy, either, for that matter. And I really hated her brother and his wife (Thomas McCarthy and Laura Dern). They were annoying as all fuck. Their little girl was cute, though. She had some good moments with her aunt.
I couldn’t really figure out where Mike was going with this movie. I’m told that he was inspired to write it after his dog died. That’s all well and good, but make sure that writing takes a little focus. Peggy becomes an animal activist mainly because she wants a relationship with Newt (Sarsgaard). First off, that’s a terrible reason to do something like that. Second, all of the activists in the film were ridiculous. But they kept making good points. But I hated them. But they made sense. But they were parodies of vegans. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Make up your fucking mind!!! Do you want them to be stupid or right?
I have no idea if Mike White is a vegan. Not a clue. He seemed to not like these people as much as he liked them. All I know is that after seeing this movie, all I wanted was to eat ribs. With a side of poodle.
