Year of the Dog

As a first-time director, Mike White does not have the courage of his weirdness to the extent he did as writer and actor in Chuck & Buck, and does not have the pizzaz of, say, a Richard Linklater directing his script for School of Rock. So this film winds up as neither funny enough nor strange enough, neither sweet or sour, hot or cold. It’s just not crazy or true enough, which makes for a surprisingly long 90 minutes. Which is not to say there aren’t good things in it. Molly Shannon is quite convincing as the 40ish singleton driven quietly mad by the death of her beloved beagle, and is well supported by the likes of Peter Sarsgaard and Laura Dern. But shtick undermines plausibility at some points, and the story begins to seem arbitrarily constructed, rather than discovered in all its quirks and eye-opening twists. (2007, Images, n.) *5+* (MC-71.)