Smartorhypo
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Haven Kaycee
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
hennemark
It's inaccurate to call this a comedy expecting there to be humor. The most entertaining part was the "intermission." The story line is broken into four parts, each of which is more depressing than the prior one. I searched for but didn't find any real connection between the parts other than that each one featured an individual who owned a dachshund. Some of the segment endings were very upsetting if you like dogs.I guess the acting and photography was good, but that's about all.
axapvov
I guess I had forgotten who Todd Solondz was when I decided to watch this movie. I remember now how much I hated "Happiness" and it seems the psychopathic film maker hasn't really changed and continues to exploit his trademark of depressive characters and deadpan so-called humor. If people are buying why would he stop?In this, the dog is supposed to be an excuse to link different stories but practically the only time you will notice the dog is in the intermission, a lame trick to stop even trying to connect any story of any kind. After that, he feels finally free to do what he likes the most: showing disconnected, half-assed stories that don't go anywhere. If you can't get good, get bleak, he most probably believes that. Every single character in this is the saddest ****. There aren't nuances of any kind, everything is ****, no redemption, no nothing, everyone is either a loser or a moron. The worst part is that vision doesn't even feel honest, or convinced, but more like a trademark he maintains cause he can't think of anything else.This guy hates his characters and his audience almost as much as Haneke. Both are up there as my most hated directors. The difference is I respect Haneke.
SeattleGal34
Spoiler. But I wish I had seen a spoiler for this movie. I wish I had known that the wiener dog runs into traffic and gets RUN OVER BY A TRUCK ON SCREEN and then run over again and again on screen before wasting 2 hours of my life watching this. I cannot un-see this now and it will play over and over in my mind for days to come now. Very upsetting. I should have had a clue when one of the characters straps a ticking bomb on the wiener dog in the previous vignette; I had a feeling... if I saw this film in a theater I would have walked out. I cannot believe it has even 5 stars--the characters are absolutely horrible. There's nothing redeeming whatsoever about this movie which is disappointing considering how much I loved Welcome To The Doll House. WTF? AWFUL and I will have nightmares for weeks now.
BlueFairyBlog
If you haven't seen anything by Todd Solondz, you have been missing out. Seriously, you have not lived until you have seen the absolutely pitch black comedies that he has directed. Classics such as "Happiness" and "Welcome to the Dollhouse" have been among my favorites for years, and no these are not films concerning happy people, or the fantasies invoked by the image of a child's toy. Todd Solondz captures a spark of the American consciousness that is both upsetting and completely ridiculous. You hope that these people are not real, that these situations do not impact the daily lives of anyone you truly love and cherish, but they absolutely do.Solondz has been making movies for twenty years but none of them have been as immensely loved as the two I just mentioned. This particular film premiered at Sundance in January and was bought up by IFC and Amazon Studios for VOD release in April. This low key release hasn't lent to great word of mouth, but then again what are you going to say about this film that would make someone willingly watch it? Do you talk about the section where Danny DeVito plays a defeated and morose screen writing professor? The first section that shows the acquisition of the wiener dog and its subsequent sickness via the ingestion of chocolate? (And all the mess that entails) What you should tell people is that it's atmospheric, moody, and self- assured in its stark representations of down and out losers.Solondz films don't show winners. They show people who deserve far worse than they're getting, or people who are so devastatingly wrong in every aspect of their lives that it's embarrassing to watch them just live them. The characters he chose for this film are each unique in a very different way. Julie Delpy's soft spoken mother consistency tries to break bad news to her child about the facts of life by overtly lying to his face. Terrible, inscrutable words form on her lips and flow out of her in a delivery style that is so blunt that it physically hurts.Honestly, if you like weird, this is going to be your favorite film of the year. While it doesn't exaggerate its mood with grand effects or strange settings, it's a film that tells the little person's tale. Grandmothers sometimes don't connect with their offspring. Parents sometimes can't trust their children. Making a spontaneous decision can change big aspects of your life. These are the themes that Solondz focuses on to great effect, and though these are small spaces, they produce a grand film.
