Dog

Rating: 5/10 (11 February 2002)

This is a movie for children with a few kibbles thrown in for adults. Jack Nicholson is reliable, as usual, and Helen Hunt is surprisingly appealing, but their performances are torpedoed by a plot that is lifted from Walt Disney's most saccharine nightmare.
Where to begin? We start with a guy suffering from OCD, played for laughs, and played very well too. Nicholson is a misogynistic, anti-Semitic homophobe, and an amusing one. He has nowhere to go but up. And the movie is basically the story of his rise up the ladder to what the rest of us consider "normality."
First the dog. Any movie with a dog, especially a cute, curly little thing, immediately prompts any reasonable person to envy the misanthrope who lives alone and likes it. This beast is unbearable, with disproportionately large black eyes straight out of a Walter Keane painting, who actually manages to produce tears when he seems about to leave Nicholson for another keeper. Even Disney wouldn't have dared that.
Next the gay artist and his friends from across the hall, the gay guy who is bashed and sent to the hospital, whom Nicholson eventually comes to accept. Half-way up the ladder now, folks.
Finally, the woman, the waitress he's been hassling at the restaurant, the woman with the seriously ill child at home. Nicholson reaches the top of the ladder when he tells her, "You make me want to be a better man."
Finally the nightmare is over. It did well critically too, as well as with the public. And when Nicholson is on screen, you don't want to take your eyes off him. But the movie falls into a certain, increasingly commonly encountered class: the garish, in-your-face, about-something-important class that really doesn't have much to say.
Brooks is only one of several directors who really aren't trying to produce anything else. Ron Howard, Penny Marshall, and Rob Reiner are others. They're more like made-for-TV think pieces than features. (Brooks was a writer and director for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show.") The films are colorful, sprinkled with obscenities and innuendos, filled with choker close ups as if the director had forgotten for the moment that he was shooting for the big screen rather than the small, spiced up with set-pieces and windy speeches that spell out whatever kibble of information the film carries. There is never a moment's doubt about who and what is good or bad.
The endings are happy. Everyone wants a happy ending and they get nothing if not wish-fulfillment in these movies. But -- despite itself -- this movie and the others like it raise a quite serious question: Exactly how dumbed-down are American movies going to get?