Year of the Dog

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

Year of the Dog is a quiet, disappointing character study of a thirty-ish single female (SNL's Molly Shannon) whose life falls apart when her beloved beagle suddenly dies. You know the type. Lonely, competent at her boring desk job, everything in its place in her unimpressive-but-sunny tract home. This is the kind of person whose yearly Kodak picture Christmas cards always include her faithful pet, the one caring soul in the world who actually loves her back. They sleep together, they eat together, they watch TV together. Shannon, a good actress in a lot of bad movies, is the best thing about the film, which unfortunately turns melodramatic when her growing rage over the dog's untimely death slowly turns her into an out-of-control animal activist. Among other things, she frees a local shelter's 13 canine residents and lets them run rampant in her once-pristine home as madness seems to overtake her. On top of that, a budding relationship with another dog aficionado (Peter Sarsgaard) first turns weird when he says he can't return her affections. Screenwriter Mike White (Nacho Libre , School of Rock) makes his directorial debut here and gets all the small details of this fragile life down perfectly. But crafting a coherent story out of her increasingly isolated world seems far from his grasp. The film is a little too smug and quirky for its own good. You want to leave feeling good about this person, but ultimately you just feel sorry for her.