Wiener-Dog

source: Wiener-Dog

Do not see this movie. Whatever the director and producer were trying to convey, killing off animals is never entertaining (or killing people for that matter). I also found that the camera spent a bit too much time on the dog in her cage during the opening scene (we got the point much sooner than the filmmaker seems to have believed), and especially on the massive amounts of excrement that no dog of that size or larger could have ever excreted In less than 24 hours. The camera panned large "puddles" of the stuff down a long driveway that seemed as though it would never stop. This is after they already showed sh$t all over the inside of the house. To be fair - slightly - I walked out when the dog was hit by a truck, and run over again and again, like she was nothing. I don't know how it ends and maybe somehow it redeemed itself. Hmmm. Nah, I doubt it. If you love animals, and especially films that provide you (and everyone) some much needed inspiration, skip this movie. Too bad the trailer was so deceptive or I would have skipped it too.

From the start, this offensive self indulgent (and quite poorly acted) movie substitutes random and persistent negativity for dark humor. There is nothing funny or creative in the writing. As the movie progresses it becomes more reliant upon empty incoherent doings to take up space rather than develop any meaningful characters who can convey anything approaching irony or wit. It abuses the audience's attention by its hook. a cute wandering puppy who dies brutally and graphically at the end of the movie in a completely pointless scene that can only engender antipathy towards anyone associated with this stinker of a movie. Like a very bad self possessed student film, it seems to think that eliciting any reaction from the audience through any inane vehicle constitutes an artistic accomplishment. It is not. It is certainly one of the five Worst movies I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of movies. The only cold comfort I have from seeing this piece of garbage in the theater is that there were only two other paying film goers in the audience who also seem offended and bored.

Gawd almighty. I sat through this to the end in the vain hope it might redeem itself somewhere along the line.... No such luck. I'm reviewing this as a warning to all but the most pretentious twats. Despite the title, this is not a Hallmark calibre family film. If only! With an impressive line up of recognisable names in front of the camera I'd hoped for something.... anything.... Wooden acting; terrible script work; over-loooooooooooooong, pointless pauses leading nowhere and what seemed like a manic depressive infatuation with seeing nothing but the darkest, saddest, self-consuming misery in almost every scene. Many scenes had zero discernible bearing on what passed for a story line. With the sole exception of Keaton Nigel Cooke putting Delpy and Letts to shame in the acting department in every scene they share (not their fault I'm sure??), this is dirge. Even the pooch seemed a bit embarrassed enough by the whole shambles to keep making a break for it. Which brings me to the films one redeeming feature - the wiener at least manages to escape any chance of a sequel. This is clearly only for the blandest of film students, but I don't know one shallow enough to make anything of this other than a sorry list of 'what not to do when making a film'.

I don't write reviews of the movies i watch in regular but i felt that this movie deserved some dissection. The movie itself is structured into four parts which are all very loosely interconnected by the Wiener-Dog. While the first two parts explained how the dog got passed over it remains completely unclear how he went from April (PART2-Ending) to DeVito (Part 3) or from there to Nana the grumpy old Lady, trowing you over and over again into a story-line without explaining the connection. The Characters themselves are pretty flat and two dimensional with exception of the little Boy (Part 1) and especially Greta Gerwig (Part 2) which plays the social awkward young woman remarkably well. Other than those two there are no performances that i would consider more then mediocre. Another reviewer mentioned that Solondz portrays ugly people in contrary to the idealized people you see in regular movies which is in fact true but except in this movie it was overly odd for odd's sake being no better the idealized contrary. There are movies that manage to portray every day people without idealization or using overly odd characters like Mathiessen's 'Dennis' but Wiener Dog is none of those. I'm the kind that likes to watch experimental movies but this just felt like a waste of time as it was overly stretched to fill the 90 Minute mark when it could have been done in 50 Minutes without lacking anything of its message. There are people that like voyeuristic movies in which you get to take a look inside the life's of regular people but this movie doesn't work this way. It is a overly stretched freak show featuring the oddest kind and which is very loosely hold together by the Wiener Dog as somewhat of a gimmick that theoretically could be completely cut out of the movie without doing too much damage to its message. In a way it reminded me of 'Amores Perros' by Alejandro González Iñárritu which featured four stories all interconnected and all of them featuring a dog (multiple dogs) which probably influenced Solondz yet besides that are two incomparable movies. Another thing that itches me quite a lot is that this movie is considered Comedy when it is in fact a pretty depressing very gray movie featuring out of the back of my head TWO(2!) scenes that could be considered funny in a sarcastic way. One being Julie Delpy portraying the Islamophobic Mother of the little boy telling the story of the rabid squirrel raping dog which strangely was named Mohammed and the other featuring DeVito and his specially made "Dog Dress". This was also the thing that left a slight Islamophobic aftertaste i didn't quite like. Overall I'd say people looking for a comedy should look elsewhere as this movie is ANYTHING BUT a comedy. This movie is at best worth a watch if you are into experimental movies if not DO NOT WATCH IT! If you are in a depressive mood DO NOT WATCH IT! Simply put this movie is: A boring long stretched pretentious attempt to interconnect the stories and life of four overly odd (for odd's sake) and overly 2D Characters by using a dog yet failing to deliver this premise by leaving huge explanatory gaps in between them. FINAL VERDICT: NOT RECOMMENDED!

Seriously, this movie was a waste of time. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't a movie supposed to have a point of some sort? This, in my opinion, was entirely pointless and unnecessary. Basically just "meh". To add insult to injury, it was also poorly directed and poorly acted. Having seen "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (which was rather good) by the same director, I expected more. A lot more. I was expecting a comedy involving a dog (that's how the movie was advertised, after all), bet instead I got a mundane, pointless, lazy, dull, pretentious, amateurish borefest. It was supposed to demonstrate how a dog passing from one caretaker to another has impacted those people's, and the dog's own, life. Sounded interesting, but that's not what this movie is about. There are just random people (with zero character development) that nobody gives a s*** about, and a dog thrown in the middle completely out of context. Not my idea of a good story-line (what story-line?). I like thought-provoking movies, or at least ones that have a message of some kind. This? This was just random drivel. Makes you wonder how garbage of this sort even gets funding. I would like to see the person, who read the script and thought to himself that it was worthy of a movie. That person probably represent everything that's wrong with today's society. Those who sponsored this movie should think long and hard as I can name at least a 1000 causes where the money that went into producing this trash would be a lot more useful. Conclusion: Wiener-Dog is film-making at it's worst. Note to self: Avoid Todd Solondz's "work" in the future. Looks like he's done. SPOILER: The dog is ran over by a car - 3 times in a row - in the end. Very "artistic" and "indie", I'm sure (heavy sarcasm), but I'm still missing the point. And then - in the final scene - we see an art exhibit where the dead dog is displayed in a piece of "artistic expression". Jeez, this movie is just dreadfully pathetic. I guess this is what happens when people totally run out of ideas for a movie.

*********Although this comment contains "spoilers", nothing will spoil this movies as much as watching it.*********** How does such a director ever get funding to make such a lousy movie. As many reviews here attest, this movie is utter garbage not worth watching and barely worth reviewing, as that would be a further waste of time. But I have to... I thought the story-line sounded interesting and original. The movie started with some semblance of a link between scenes which moved from caretaker to caretaker, but half way through, this was gone. The result was a random set of scenes with sad human stories you were puzzled why the director wanted to share with his/her audience. You will have guessed it by now, as the movie offers nothing more than - at best - an interesting snippet with Danny De Vito and has nothing virtually nothing to do with a wiener-dog and less as to how that dog "affected" people's lives. No relationship whatsoever between the two apart from the dog being filmed in the frame. The dog is incidental as is the title. Just sticking a dog in a scene with unrelated stories of humans cannot qualify this movie as "how a (wiener) dog affects the lives of human care takers". Do not waste your time. You will regret it.

this movie is awful. just awful. You can never get your time back.... the actors should petition to have it scraped off their records, it's that bad..... I couldn't even finish watching it It's one of those films, when you think to yourself, "surely after it started off this badly, there is this big surprise coming.... 20 minutes you are thinking, my gawd, this is going to be one huge surprise now to make up for this pile of garbage.... 15 more minutes, you think to yourself, how can one turn a corner from here? I mean this is so underwhelming and weird and bland and empty, then you go to Wikipedia to read the plot and you realize that you must wipe this movie of your rental history and never speak of it again. The guild feeling of having wasted even the tiniest portion of my life on this, the embarrassment of thinking this awful start was just a build up to something equally amazing....just unbearable. Is director in the rehab now? Did he write it in there?.....

Seems like it's too easy to offend people nowadays. Seriously, if at least 20 users voted 1 for this movie, it is not about director, actors, story or photography. It is more about their state of mind, and some kind of emotional instability. First of all, this is a movie which has it's own style (moreover Todd Solondz has it's own unique style), which is simple, yet requires certain movie watching experience, and sense for slight surrealism. It was never intended to be artsy, au contraire, it mocks to 'too artsy' attitude... All characters were intentionally made like caricatures, in order to present their flaws and shortcomings in more obvious, yet funny and sarcastic way. But don't get fooled so easily, all of them reflects real behavior, which we can observe all around us: parents who make up idiotic stories instead of simply tell the truth to their kids, lonely losers with dysfunctional families, worthless but pathologically ambitious people, shameless nerdy hipsters, damien hirst wannabees and such charming creatures... Simply, it's highly sarcastic, anti-indie, somehow childish-style comedy, which may offend only someone who perceived it as a mirror... Ah yes, it's called "Wiener-dog" so everyone expected a warm dog story, and they all ended up disappointed? Then watch Disney instead.

"Wiener-Dog" (2016 release; 90 min.) brings the story of a wiener-dog as she is passed on from caretaker to caretaker. As the movie opens, we see someone drop off Wiener-Dog at the shelter, and in the very next scene, a dad surprises his young son, a cancer survivor we are told, with the gift he's always dreamt of: having his very own pet. Unfortunately, the dog must first be house-broken and that is easier said than done, to the desperation of both the young boy and his parents. Then one day, the boy feeds granola bars to the dog, upsetting the dog's stomach... At this time we're not even 15 minutes into the movie but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out. Couple of comments: this is the latest project from independent writer-director Todd Solndz ("Welcome to the Dollhouse", "Dark Horse"). Here he bring perhaps his most accessible story yet: how a cute-looking, just plain adorable, wiener-dog goes from household to household, where we get a glimpse of those people's lives. There are essentially 4 unrelated stories with Wiener-Dog as the common thread. The movie is helped immensely by, of course, the cute looking dog, but equally so by a number of stellar acting performances. In the first story, the young boy reminded me of Fred Savage, Wonder Years-era. Julie Delpy plays his mom. In the second segment, Greta Gerwig thankfully stays MILES away from her usual Diane Keaton-like NY young neurotic woman, and instead gives a wonderful turn as the seemingly lost young woman. Gerwig plays it with a vulnerability not previously seen from here. In the third segment Danny DeVito plays the lead, while in the last segment, Ellen Burstyn reminds us why she still has the acting chops. I must admit that I knew next-to-nothing about the film prior to seeing it (other than it featured a really cute dog), and I was very pleasantly surprised by it. It is billed as a 'comedy', but frankly, I don't think it was a comedy at all (there certainly aren't any laugh-out-loud moments in it). Instead it is a peek at ordinary people's lives, including their struggles and insecurities. And how many movies have you seen lately where there is an actual (if short) intermission? Yes, indeed! "Wiener-Dog" premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim, and Amazon Studies (yes, them again) snapped it up right away. The movie opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and I couldn't wit to see it. The Friday early evening screening was attended so-so, and I can only hope that this had to due with the picture-perfect weather we are enjoying here today. If you are interested in a slightly off-center movie about ordinary people's lives, including having a cute dog, I'd suggest you check this out, be it in the theater or on Amazon Instant Video (simultaneous release), or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. "Wiener-Dog" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!