Year of the Dog

After incriminating himself in the creation of two horrid comedy blockbusters (School of Rock and Nacho Libre), indie darling Mike White finally returns to his oddball roots with a funny, poignant, and completely bizarre little movie that only he could make. Year of the Dog stars “Saturday Night Live” alum Molly Shannon as Peggy, a dog obsessed loner whose beloved pooch, Pencil, meets an unfortunate end early in the film. His death leaves her heartbroken, and the film follows her year of mourning through delightful bits of romantic comedy (Peter Sarsgaard and John C. Reilly play her potential beaus) and eventually into what turns out to be somewhat of a nervous breakdown. In true Mike White fashion, you can never really assess what’s to come or predict just how far Peggy might go in her grieving. Logic is not White’s strong suit. In fact, his screwball comedies are perhaps the screwiest of this or any generation. In the past he’s followed sexual obsession (Chuck & Buck) and adultery (The Good Girl). Now he’s milking laughter and tears out of “dog people” to whom platonic animal love is the only true connection they’ll ever enjoy. It might be a vaguely absurd feature (okay, maybe clearly absurd), but there exists a strange softness in between the craziness of Peggy’s debauched post-Pencil behavior that make it all too real. White’s gift is in bringing to life with complete fullness some of film’s most palpably unhinged weirdos. At a certain point, we see Peggy strolling down the street, walking her dog (a new one she hopes will fill the void) and looking sort of crazy, and then it sets in: White has made us understand the dog walkers. We’ve peaked behind Peggy’s canine obsession and though we recognize her strangeness, we can also understand her motivations.

Part of Peggy’s “new life” includes an animal rescue binge that leads her to make numerous donations to charitable causes and become a vegan. The movie is a bit of a paean to the animal world, and to animal lovers, but it’s also a skeptical watchdog observing some of the hypocritical cruelties inflicted by those that become overly passionate. Peggy’s animal right activism is portrayed positively but it is also made clear that she is not the most stable of people. She shuns the attention of her best friend (one-liner machine Regina King) and betrays the trust of her uptight suburban sister-in-law (a scene stealing Laura Dern as “that kind of mom”). She turns inward, to her animals, making Shannon’s often silent but always radiant performance even more of a wonder. She shows us the goodness of Peggy, her love of animals and her intention to do positive things. She also lets us witness the slightly frayed and crazy anti-social tendencies that define her unfortunate life state. It’s one of those brilliant performances that no one could have expected based on previously observed film work. Shannon’s “SNL” characters were mostly cartoonishly crafted outsiders, but here she elaborates the archetype into a vivid, deeply human soul searcher rather than merely letting her remain just an armpit sniffing “Superstar!”

My only problem with the film, and White’s work in general, is that his desire to drive the characters far over the edge almost always makes their conclusion seem forced or somehow sudden and unbelievable. It’s as if they go to the darkest possible place they can go and then spontaneously awaken the next day back to normal and completely recovered from whatever lapse of judgment had motivated the film’s climax. They generally have some socially unacceptable craving, one that never really gets sated, but always seems to dissipate just in time for the credits to role. I almost wish them more darkness, not because they’re characters I wish would suffer, but simply because without it they lose the intense despair that made them so satisfyingly real in the first place.

Grade: A-