Well, this Dog bites. If it were lying in the grass at the dog park, you'd try not to step in it, if you catch my drift. Written and directed by Bruce McCulloch (always the most irritating of the Kids in the Hall), who also has a small part, it's like a bunch of really weak Kids in the Hall skits strung loosely together. Puppy-eyed Luke Wilson has just been dumped by Claire from "Beverly Hills 90210" (sign #34 that your life sucks; sign #33 being that you're dating Claire from "Beverly Hills 90210" in the first place; I mean, for god's sakes, she dated Brian Austin Green!). (We know he's a nice guy because he wears adorably rumpled clothes and exudes an "aw-shucks" diffidence.) Then it turns into one of those crappy ABC sitcoms about singles in the city lookin' for love (or as Buckwheat would say, "wookin' pa nub").
The acting is TV-scale, too -- too small to register on the big screen. Janeane maintains the same blank expression and doesn't even have any good lines. Luke Wilson wanders around looking slightly stunned. The beautiful Natasha Henstridge, Wilson's love interest, looks like she's starring in a Salon Selectives commercial and adjusts her acting accordingly. And I've seen better chemistry between Ken and Barbie than between these two blank-faced ciphers.
There's just not enough to this movie to hate, and frankly, I don't even particularly want those two hours of my life back, because I didn't really have any other plans today anyway. And I saw it for free because Stephen and I used the passes we got the last time we went to the Regal Cinema Ballston and the fire alarm went off (natch, there was another mechanical problem today). But don't mistake this relatively mild critique for even a lukewarm recommendation -- avoid Dog Park at all costs.
Speaking of Regal Cinemas, they prove once again one of my most valuable life lessons: If you complain, you often get free stuff. Though it took them a while, they finally replied to my letter of complaint with humble apologies and four free passes. Of course, my first reaction was, "Oh crap, now I have to go to that theater four more times" -- not unlike the time I wrote a letter of complaint to Wilson World Hotels after having a bad experience at their hotel across the street from Graceland, when they charged us for having a third person in our room even though they'd told me the night before that there wouldn't be an extra charge, and when I complained that they hadn't even given us an extra cot, the manager smirked, "Well, couldn't you girls have shared a bed?" and winked at me leeringly. So I complained to their president and added at the end of my letter, "Don't you dare send me any coupons or certificates for your hotels, because I'm never patronizing your company again," and sure enough, they sent me a certificate good for a "Heartbreak Hotel Weekend" (good only at their Graceland location) which actually would have been a good deal if I'd been able to go back to Graceland in the 6 months I had before the certificate expired.
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