Movie Notes: Stray Dogs

September 15th, 2008

Note: This is an entry in the second Webomatica So Bad They’re Good movie contest.

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –5 stars

Starring Guinevere Turner, Dot Jones, Bill Sage
Directed by Catherine Crouch

Synopsis

Darla Carter (Guinevere Turner) and her two young children live in rural America with a morose sister-in-law (Dot-Marie Jones), and an alcoholic, absent husband (Bill Sage). Hilarity ensues. Well, unintentional hilarity.

The Good

• N/A.

The Bad

• The set-up: mom with two unruly kids. Alcoholic, deadbeat husband. What oh whatever shall happen? Whatever you’re thinking, pretty much does.
• The tagline: You’re born on the mountain, you die on the mountain. Hint duly taken that there will be some dying in the movie.
• Exterior, run-down house. Mom isn’t watching her kids, one of whom pours gasoline in a pile of dirt and lights it on fire. Guess there isn’t any World Of Warcraft out here in the sticks. Mom meanwhile looks quite wistful and uninterested in the havoc the kids are wreaking around her. Must be the gasoline fumes.
• In these parts, people speak in cliches and euphemisms, I suppose because it’s always been done this way and there ain’t no sense in doing done things any different. You know what they say — eyes in the back of his head, I need you to be my little man, Are we broke? No, we’re poor.
• Darla’s sister-in-law Jolene is a lesbian, implying she’d make a better parent to the kids than the deadbeat, alcoholic one (absent in the movie so far) but Darla is clueless or at least could never entertain the thought. I guess episodes of the L Word haven’t quite hit this neck of the woods, either.
• Drunk husband returns and starts laying down the law, in a very distasteful and depressing manner — he ties up mom with a belt and hangs her form a pole. Maybe he’s been to a big city where they practice bondage.
• Since Jolene is twice hubby’s size and he’s drunk, I think she and Darla could easily take him out, but they never do, since he has a shot gun. Or perhaps they’ve been raised to never question the men, yet another rural custom that I would have figured died along with the advent of cable television. Oh, but they don’t get that out here in these them parts.
• The ending just begs to be spoiled. Dad shoots his sister, spraying blood on one of the kid. He starts sucking his thumb. Dog attacks dad. Second kid tries to shoot the dog and accidentally shoots his own “pa.” A really long, pointless shot of the younger kid sucking his thumb while sitting in the front seat of Darla’s car before they drive off to parts unknown. All this death and destruction, and all I could think was, that thumb must taste good.

Conclusion

Stray Dogs is essentially an excruciatingly tedious, dull play, all set in one yawn-inducing single location. The acting is decent but everything else fails to provide any support. I wanted someone to put me out of my misery. And some complain Mad Men is too slow.

IMDB: Stray Dogs