How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dogby Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter, 21 September 2000
TORONTO -- Other than Woody Allen films,
comedies about curmudgeons are few and far
between. Audiences tend to see little reason to
sympathize with a perpetually disgruntled
fussbudget who lashes out at everyone in his
life. But screenwriter-director Michael Kalesniko has
managed to pull off such a
comedy with "How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog," and he
succeeds for two
reasons: His protagonist is played by a rumpled yet robust
Kenneth Branagh, who
brings surprising warmth to the role of a playwright beset
by problems on many
fronts, and Kalesniko's script lets us understand
immediately what's really bugging
his hero -- the dreaded writer's block.
Movies about writers usually don't set boxoffice records,
but this Millennium
Films release has an unusually high ratio of laughs per
minute. If Millennium
carefully targets urban dwellers older than 25 and gets
solid reviews, "How to
Kill" should reverse those expectations. It was
well-received as the closing-night
film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Crises come at Peter McGowan (Branagh) from many angles.
There is, of course,
dilemma No. 1: After a run of boxoffice successes as the
angry young playwright
of Los Angeles, McGowan has hit a wall. Three successive
flops have devastated
his self-confidence, so he decides to workshop an
incomplete drama with a
hotshot director (David Krumholtz) who is addicted to
Petula Clark songs and
two flighty actors (Jonathan Schaech and Kaitlin Hopkins).
But the idea is not
working.
Meanwhile, wife Melanie (Robin Wright Penn), a children's
dance instructor,
wants a child of her own; his mother-in-law (Lynn
Redgrave) battles Alzheimer's;
a stalker (Jared Harris) insists he's the real Peter
McGowan; and the mutt next
door barks all night.
Also new in the neighborhood is 10-year-old Amy (Suzi
Hofrichter), afflicted with
a mild case of cerebral palsy. Melanie invites the girl
over frequently, hoping that
Peter will warm up to children. This tactic fails
miserably until his play's producer
(Peter Riegert) and director insist that Peter's dialogue
for a 10-year-old
character doesn't ring true, so Peter befriends Amy to
study her speech pattern.
"How to Kill" is, in essence, about the creative process
and how an artist uses life
for their own purposes. It also is about the selfishness
to which an artist must cling
if they are to achieve their goals. But this makes the
film sound heavy -- which it
never is.
Peter's ego-deflating situations keep him off-balance, in
search of creative
equilibrium. Kalesniko's writing and direction are ever on
the prowl for the
oddball and offbeat.
While structured shrewdly, the screenplay is made to
appear random as Peter
bumps from crisis to crisis. He makes friends with his
stalker and, because the
dog keeps him awake, takes dead-of-night strolls with the
other Peter McGowan,
thus having, in a sense, conversations with "himself."
A testy exchange between Peter and a morning talk-show
interviewer (Peri
Gilpin) -- portions of which crop up throughout the movie
-- turns that interview
into a dialogue between our hero and his Greek chorus, who
upbraids the
playwright for the sexism in his early works and the
failure of his most recent ones.
This is one of those rare films to which one must really
listen as the acerbic
remarks fly by rapid-fire and dialogue exchanges brim with
wit.
There are rough patches, though. The mother-in-law's
confusions serve little
purpose and don't give Redgrave much to play. A key
confrontation between
McGowan and Amy's mother (Lucinda Jenney) is set up so
poorly that it springs
almost out of nowhere.
Other moments are total serendipity, including an
encounter between Peter and a
screenwriter at a party that adds little to the story but
is a witty exchange that, if
nothing else, should delight fellow writers.
Shooting in Vancouver, Kalesniko and his cinematographer
and production
designer have more or less reinvented Los Angeles, turning
it into a state of mind
rather like a small town instead of the usual smoggy,
sun-blasted urban sprawl.
HOW TO KILL YOUR NEIGHBOR'S DOG
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