In this dog-crazy year, a stampede of canine creations is howling through theatres and chewing up DVD shelves. Mike White's contribution, Year of the Dog, is at least unique. But, sadly, it is not successful.
Instead, Year of the Dog is just recognizably different from the current theatrical release of Sleeping Dogs -- a gritty human drama set in Canada -- or current doggie-DVD releases such as this week's Sleeping Dogs Lie -- a taboo-busting bit of bestiality set in Bobcat Goldthwait's sicko world. In Year of the Dog, Molly Shannon stars as a middle-aged Californian who goes psychotic when her beloved dog dies, turning her into an extreme animal rights activist. By the time she hits her 19th nervous breakdown, her now-pathetic character has no hope of being inspirational.
Instead, she makes us suicidal. Wrong message for a movie that seems at least to care about dogs and other critters. Does one really need to be nuts to become a defender of our four-footed friends?
White's film seems to say so. There are attributes, however, that give the film promise in the early going. Screenwriter White (The School of Rock, The Good Girl, co-writer on the brilliant Nacho Libre) has a keen eye for real-life characters.
And a clever wit for turning them into unusual human beings. He also has cast with eccentric glee. So Shannon's lonely but compelling secretary is surrounded by interesting people, like her wacko neighbour (John C.
Reilly), her anal sister-in-law (Laura Dern), her uptight boss (John Pais), her kooky colleague (Regina King) and her new friend (Peter Sarsgaard), an animal lover who operates a shelter. But something goes seriously wrong with the story arc here. White, making his directorial debut with his own script, seems incapable of herding his own pet project into a sensible arena so he can put on a show.
By the time much of the story plays out, Shannon's character is such a looney tune that legitimate animal activism has been pushed aside by sheer insanity. And she is not the only one with less common sense than the dogs. Sarsgaard's character turns out to be sexually dysfunctional.
It is a throwaway quirk that had no place in the rest of this movie, feeling instead like something left over from one of White's subversive freaks and geeks scripts. You also get the idea that filmmaker White thought he was making a serious comedy, not a drama. There are "comedy caper" scenes, such as having Shannon drive about town with a car full of dogs (although, in California, maybe that is a routine sight).
Yet Shannon is so sad, such a damned downer, that any laughs or even chuckles also inspire guilt in the viewers. These moments exact too great a toll. Then again, if this movie is supposed to be primarily a serious character study about a woman who has lost her grip on reality, due to a legitimate tragedy, then something has gone wrong, too.
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