Dog Days lifts a leg on Hollywood hydrant

Movie review: Dog Days

A fluffy version of Crash for canines features the lives and leashes of various Angelenos intertwining, without once pausing to smell its own assumptions.

Dog Days

2.5/5

Starring: Nina Dobrev, Vanessa Hudgens, Finn Wolfhard, Eva Longoria, Rob Corddry, Ron Cephas Jones, Michael Cassidy, Tone Bell

Directed by: Ken Marino

Running time: 1 hr 53 mins

Rating: Parental Guidance

By Katherine Monk

If you want to make it sell, put a bird on it. If you want to make it viral, put a cat in it. If you want to make it universal, let a dog lick its face.

We love dogs because dogs seem to love us back. And in Los Angeles, a lot of people need some unconditional love. At least that’s the takeaway from Dog Days, a comedy suffering from heat stroke, begging you to roll down the window for some fresh air.

A version of Crash for canine owners, we enter the lives of several Angelenos and watch as their life paths criss-cross, and their leashes entwine.

So we watch Canadian actress Nina Dobrev play a morning newscaster with a bad ex but a cute dog. She’s got a potential walking partner with a handsome NFL star (Tone Bell). Then there’s Vanessa Hudgens as Tara, a sweet barista looking for a purpose when she finds an ailing chihuahua and a handsome vet (Michael Cassidy). Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) is a kid who helps an old widower (Ron Cephas Jones) find his fat pug. Eva Longoria and Rob Corddry play adoptive parents to a little girl who likes dogs, and Adam Pally plays a slacker musician who is tasked with taking care of his big sister’s energetic labradoodle while she and her husband deal with twin babies.

We love dogs because dogs seem to love us back. And in Los Angeles, a lot of people need some unconditional love. At least that’s the takeaway from Dog Days, a comedy suffering from heat stroke, begging you to roll down the window for some fresh air.

It’s up to the viewer to begin matchmaking — both the humans, and the dogs. For instance, who will end up with Gertrude, the lost chihuahua named after Gertrude Stein, who gives this movie its significant quote: “I am I because my little dog knows me…”?

So much to think about, and thanks to the thin broth of a plot, there are plenty of unused neurons at your disposal to process such things as: why dogs have become increasingly important to urban professionals, how the phrase “family dog” has transformed into a “dog family,” and how quickly technology has corrupted our sense of touch — forever pushing buttons in a brain-pulsing but genuinely empty expenditure of time and emotion.

Not that anything on the screen could possibly address any of these inquiries. The whole thing is following a cheap scent trail laid out by every romantic comedy and sit-com that came before, and lifted a leg on the Hollywood hydrant.

If it weren’t for the dogs, the whole thing would be unbearable. Yet, therein lies the magic of the internet and animals on screen. Something primal happens when you stare into a pug’s brown eyes, spaced and positioned in proportion to a human: You feel empathy, without the niggling hesitations that happen with humans. It’s all in; we have to surrender to their muddy gaze and feel that warm wave of love.

Something primal happens when you stare into a pug’s brown eyes, spaced and positioned in proportion to a human: You feel empathy, without the niggling hesitations that happen with humans.

So we forgive the horrible screenplay from Elissa Matsueda and Erica Oyama that feels like a perforated cardboard Valentine, we give the actors endless slack for having to play out the fur-covered farce, and we thank Tig Notaro for saving the movie with two simple cameos as the dog psychologist.

The rest of the strokes go to the dogs, Tucker, the labradoodle dandy, Benny, the sad dachsund-cross, and Gracie, the chubby pug — not to mention the many others, namely the uncredited Gertrude.

They’re the heroes of this story. While the humans bumble and fumble with love, making it more complicated than it should be, dogs just let it happen. This movie tries to take a page from the canine canon, but the screenwriters chew it up with little teeth, and turn what could have been a cool take on the dogs of L.A. (complete with a Liz Phair soundtrack) into land-based episode of the Love Boat.

So much bark. So little bite.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, August 14, 2018

-30-

Review: Dog Days

User Rating

3.1 (11 Votes)

Summary

2.5Score

A fluffy version of Crash for canines features the lives and leashes of various Angelenos intertwining, without once pausing to smell its own assumptions. -- Katherine Monk

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