cortic
This film unravels beautifully from all different directions. It shows the world in all its terrible glory from an innocent perspective.She (the girl) is the story and the narrator constantly re-writing her 'fairy tails' to reflect her perspective and understanding about her life and the people in her life.The lawn dog begins his appearance as BabaYaga the fabled 'bogie-man' and then the story twists and changes and dances as the girl begins to see the truth in the people that surround her; the twisted marriage of her parents, the vindictive and cruel nature of their friends and much more.Through most of the film the girl paints herself as a victim who needs to be rescued. Her final re-write of the 'fairy tail' sees her liberated from that role to the role of the Saviour when the old 'saviors' become BabaYaga, or in her words 'everything that's evil'.A very moving film.
MW32
Let me admit up front that I turned this movie off after a half-hour. I'm a big fan of quirky, low-budget movies with odd characters, but movies that attempt to satirize contemporary mores need to have characters whose actions have some relationship to the way human beings would act in the real world. I didn't believe one second of the part of this movie I saw. The parents and community cop were straw people and the worst kind of clichés. Nobody, no matter how quirky and counter-culture, would stop in the middle of a bridge, strip naked, and dive into a creek while holding up a line of traffic. If he did, the people being held up wouldn't just sit there and watch. No ten-year-old girl would know the make and model of an old pickup truck. No---these are many other scenes were just the screenwriter's lame ways of pounding into our heads that the sympathetic characters were offbeat and charming and the unsympathetic characters were stupid and lacking in imagination. I can't believe anybody would rate this movie higher than a 3 or 4. The fact that this film could even get made and released is symptomatic of how low modern movie standards have fallen. It's really bad.
jzappa
Sam Rockwell is one of those actors who, no matter what role he's playing, is totally natural. He's immediately likable. I've always been a big fan of his, and up until yesterday had never before seen Lawn Dogs, one of the earliest films wherein he has a bigger role. He's very quietly, calmly good in it, and even in the scenes where he's playing and goofing around with Mischa Barton and it seems awkward, he maintains a pure, natural presence.Lawn Dogs says something important about the most generic slice of American life, the geometrically shaped and calculated life in the suburbs. The film doesn't unmask it. Cleverly, it maintains that quiet, perpetually sunny, middle-of-nowhere feeling of a classic subdivision, and then displays a sad and maddening scenario of misunderstanding in a closed-minded, insular neighborhood and the hauntingly realistic characters. There is a bit of animal violence in this movie, but it's played out in a tautly spare way that's just as frustrating as vain, judgmental people and matter of the rest of the film.Lawn Dogs is a refreshing sort of film. The relationship between Rockwell and Barton is heartwarming and broadly, gently natural. It's good to experience a story that altruistically communicates the genuine existence and state of mind that is often questioned and often misunderstood.
keithshop
It worries me slightly that one or two people saw this as pornographic (I wonder where they get their kicks?)This film is all about an untouchable friendship. It's no accident that the two friends are both gender and age opposites and it's this premise that carries the whole film in a way that never once sees Trent as a predator but finds a kindred spirit.Trent makes it obvious early in the film that he is not interested in the young girl in the way that some viewers found uncomfortable (why? He is seen naked with a girl his own age that surely says he is a normal young man)I can understand why some Americans would prefer not to see themselves in a certain light, but this is the point of the movie.See it, and be a better person. Yes, it's that good.
AD
