Film Review: Mike White's The Year of the Dog

[Guest guest]

by The Bridge So, I go to see Mike White's directorial debut, The Year of the Dog, alone, which is how I generally go to the movies. I spend a lot of time alone, and ordinarily that doesn't bother me. But on this particular Friday, which is a blissfully sunny day, I am feeling a wee bit cagy, just the slightest smidge of a persecution complex poking at the edges of my confidence. I am, after all, going to see a movie that is being marketed as a rom-com about a lonely, aging wallflower-type who supplants romantic love with the joys of being a doggy-mama. Will the squeaky-voiced boy in the box office pity my request for 'one, please'? Will throngs of jubilant teenagers, amorous couples, and arguing families squeeze me to the edge of the theater as I search for my one sad little seat? Before I left the calm bright of the park outside, I felt certain and assured-a grown-ass woman going about her daily business, with no apologies. But there

is something about going to see this sparticular movie in a mutiplex that makes me feel pathetic. Until, of course, I enter the theater and discover what I should have anticpated. The only folks interested in going to see the opening showing of a quirky movie about a geeky woman's journey through the world of dog-lovers and vegans are, in a city housing millions of folks, three solitary chicks, and that one dude with a throat-clearing problem that has managed to attend EVERY MOVIE I have EVER SEEN. So I relax. I am just fine. There is nothing wrong with being a loner. Which would be good news for Peggy Spade (Molly Shannon), the film's main character. A reclusive secretary who loves her dog, Peggy is the kind of woman you might forget five minutes after meeting her. She's kind-faced and listens politely to whomever wants to bend her ear; trouble is, she's too polite to ever assert any kind of influence or personality. "It's nice to have a word that defines

you." This is Peggy speaking in the midst of a major sea change in her life. The word that she's referring to is 'vegan,' a word which, twenty minutes earlier in the movie, would not have described her at all. In fact, there almost isn't a word that would describe her initially. Her character is, as I mentioned, mild-mannered, unbojectionable, pleasant to the point of wimpiness. She barely registers on anyone's radar, serving only as a sympathetic ear to an assorted grab-bag of self-involved co-workers and relatives. This is a woman sorely in need of her own identity, which is where veganism comes in. She first encounters animal activism in the form of a friendly animal lover named Newt (Peter Sarsgaard, proving that you can make a character ridiculously hilarious without compromising their dignity). Newt works for an agency that tries to place stray dogs in loving homes before they get euthanized by the state, and he contacts Peggy after seeing

her devastation when her beloved beagle Pencil dies of toxic poisoning. A friendship ensues, based on a mutual love of dogs and other beasts, which has a variety of interesting effects on socially awkward Peggy. She dives head-first into hardcore animal rights activism, plying her coworkers with vegan cupcakes while urging them to adopt dogs and sign anti-animal testing petitions. For a while, the filmmakers seem to be joining her, as several scenes set in an animal rescue farm seem to be lifted out of a PETA video. But soon enough, Peggy's behavior devolves into an increasingly erractic tailspin: drunkenly soaking her sister-in-law's furs, adopting a dozen dogs at once, forging her boss's signature to petitions and even a donation check to the rescue farm. A lot of people are going to see this movie and think that the message is: vegans are protein-deprived wingnuts. Others will note the film's overall pro-animal bent and deduce, Peggy's nuttiness aside, this

is vegan propaganda, and they'll be annoyed at having it snuck into their weekend entertainment. Which I think is a shame. Yes, it is basically a pro-vegan film, but I think that the scenes that really make that point are peripheral to the main theme. Peggy's journey is about being rudderless and desperate for direction. She could have just as easily become a gun-rights advocate; the point was that Peggy Spade (whose name you can either view as a sorta funny joke or a half-hearted attempt at subliminally encouraging population control in the domesticated animal world) was not lonely for a boyfriend (which she does try, briefly, to find in the admantly asexual Newt) or a best friend (a role her co-worker, played by the always entertaining Regina King, seems to insist on filling anyway, as she attacks the hapless Peggy with constant girl-talk confidences and sleep-over giggly energy). No, Peggy just needs something that feels right, some kind of role to play that doesn't

seem insincere or insipid. Veganism just happens to fit her needs, as a lost human who wants not only to love, but to be known, to know herself and know that others know her, too. Molly Shannon was an inspired choice for this roll. Her natural comedienne's charisma somehow makes Peggy's descent into truly inappropriate behavior a sympathetic thing; you wince at her missteps and long for her safe return to stability. White's direction, while occasionally too prissy, is mostly an asset as well: he places everything and everyone so precisely within his scenes that a sense of order is imposed on even the most dubious plotting. Each frame feels like a carefully set dinner table, which keeps the perspective nice and sober. There's also a fine cameo by John C. Reilly as a good ol' hunter boy fated to be Peggy's Worst Date Ever, and John Pais playing Peggy's uptight boss with physical genius - ever met a business man so rigid you can almost see the actual stick up his

ass? Pais obviously has, and he paid it the same kind of attention Charlie Chaplin paid to Hitler. Laura Dern, as an uber-WASPy suburban soccer mom, is another smart blast of satire. While most of the secondary characters do serve as comic relief from Peggy's mounting isolation, they are also well-chosen foils that remind us that we ALL want a word or phrase to define us, whether it's 'vegan' or 'good mother' or 'employee of the month.' The Year of the Dog isn't the funniest movie I've see this year, nor is it going to turn anyone into an animal rights hardliner. But it is a much more even-handed examination of human nature in general than the movie's marketing - they pushed it in health food stores and the like - would led me to believe. While it also will fall far from being the most touching movie I've ever seen, the film(and the actor)'s gentle self-mockery is charming enough to warrant a few dollars, and Peggy's earnest search for a place to direct

her love is a believable, honest one. Published on 05/09/07. Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.athensexchange.com/mt-tb.cgi/284Peter H

 

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