Year of the Dog Review
By David Kempler
As pleasing as the smell of wet dog
Why is "Year of the Dog" currently playing in movie houses? I'm not sure. Mike White (Nacho Libre) wrote and directed this mess. Why did anyone green light the project? No idea. Why did some of the people here agree to act in this nonsense? At least they got paid for their time. In case you haven't figured it out yet this is not going to be a 4 star review.
"Year of the Dog" stars Molly Shannon as Peggy, a woefully ill-equipped person in dealing with other human beings. Instead she has a relationship with her beagle, Pencil. No, nothing like that. Pencil is just her pet. When Pencil dies Peggy unravels, and at warp speed. At least while Pencil was alive, Peggy was happy, even if no one else could understand why.
Throughout the film I could not help but feel like I was watching an eternally bad Saturday Night Live skit. Whether Shannon is not very good, or the part is not very good or everything doesn't work is unclear. Maybe I just have no appreciation of Shannon. What I do know is that an awful lot of scenes caused me to look around the theater to see if others were as confused or annoyed by what was on the screen. There were only five people there so it's impossible to come up with a any sort of scientific findings based on my observations.
The message is that Peggy finds happiness with animals, not humans and that is not something I have a problem with. Pets on the whole are far more decent than most people. The problem is that Peggy is headed for a nervous breakdown and a date with electric shock therapy. That's not what "Year of the Dog" is showing us but it's where all Peggys end up.
I love odd movies. I love weird movies. This is odd and weird but just because something is odd or weird doesn't make it worth watching. It should have been put to sleep long before it made it into our world.
