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SUNDANCE 2007
Year of the Dog
"Year of the Dog" by Zack Roddy
Peggy (Molly Shannon) is the most skip to my Lou, happy go lucky person you have ever seen. With a job as a secretary that she loves, friends that she adores, and family that she cherishes, nothing seems to be wrong in Peggy's life. And at the center of all this happiness is Peggy's beloved beagle, Pencil. Peggy and Pencil do just about everything together: eat, sleep, and watch television. They are the epitome of idyllic companionship. But when Pencil suddenly dies one night going to the bathroom, Peggy's life is torn to shreds, and she dissolves into a great depression. As she tries to pick up the pieces and rebuild her life, she tries to fill the void in her soul where Pencil has vanished in a variety of different ways including a fling with her hunting obsessed neighbor (John C. Reilly), dating (kinda) an adamant dog lover (Peter Sarsgaard), converting to veganism, taking bad dating advice from her best friend (Regina King), quarreling with her brother and his wife (Thomas McCarthy and Laura Dern) and stealing money from her boss (Josh Pais) for charity organizations. With each new catastrophe, Peggy tries with great optimism to mend her broken heart.
Sitting in the director's chair for the first time, Mike White (writer of Sundance favorites Chuck and Buck and The Good Girl) attracts an outstanding ensemble cast, but it will be a hard film to market because it is either comedy one moment, drama the next, but nothing really in between. Every time a scene started to get funny and began to build audience members up, it didn't follow through, deflating their hopes. Molly Shannon does show that she has talent as a dramatic actress, but one always hopes that she will break out into her madcap comedy like on Saturday Night Live, something that will probably follow her the rest of her career. Overall, Year of the Dog was an okay film, but probably one that filmgoers can wait for to release on DVD.
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