YEAR OF THE DOG

RYAN: 2007 is turning out to be the year of bad movies.

CAROLINE: That was the longest short movie I’ve ever seen.

RYAN: It’s called “Year of the Dog.”

CAROLINE: Oh m’God. It started off promising. I was like, “Oh, this is a quirky, indie flick and I’m down with that.” Great actors like Molly Shannon, Peter Sarsgaard, Laura Dern.

RYAN: The performances were good but the trailer for the movie totally misled me. I thought it was going to be a fun romantic comedy, but it turned out to be this uber-political animal rights activism film.

CAROLINE: All the characters are loathsome. Molly Shannon’s character is the most annoying person in the world. She starts out as a sad sack and you pity her, but then she gets progressively detestable as the movie goes on. Her boss is awful. I could barely stand to look at him onscreen. And everyone else is annoying too.

RYAN: It’s a weird indie movie that you think is gonna be better than it is. I can appreciate a good independent film, but this one has a very awkward shooting style. There were a ridonkulous amount of single shot close-ups that disjointed the story.

CAROLINE: It was so tedious. By the end, I was counting the minutes. I knew it was a ninety-minute film and it was so bad that I had to pull out my cell phone and check the time to see how much torture I had left.

RYAN: That’s a clue that a film is dragging.

CAROLINE: There were a couple funny moments in the beginning, but honestly, that’s the only good thing I can say about this movie.

RYAN: I don’t even know where to go with this. I have to give you my bottom line: this film is not worth seeing.

CAROLINE: I have to out myself as a non-pet person and this movie is all about pets, so I was inherently set up to not like it. But I really had faith at first that it would be a cute movie, until it got so pet-focused and political that I think even pet people would be annoyed.

RYAN: Definitely. I’m the total opposite of you. I love dogs and I felt for the characters at certain points; however, the plot became too extreme for me to care.

CAROLINE: I enjoyed Laura Dern though. She was funny and kind of bitchy in this.

RYAN: And let’s be honest, we love Molly Shannon.

CAROLINE: Damn, she looked old.