Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

Weiner-Dog

12/1/2016

C
2.11

The titular hound gets passed between owners.

Directed by Todd Solondz
Starring Greta Gerwig, Kieran Culkin, and Danny Devito
Initial Review by Bobby Schmidt

Anybody who has heard anything about Todd Solondz at all, knows he's weird. I don't have much experience with him, but I tend to like odd movies.

There are some quality shows out (High Maintenance, Easy, etc) that tell stories of different people with little to no connections at all... and for me, that works great in series form with each episode telling its own story, it also worked really well for me in (http://www.mediocremovie.club/reviews/four-rooms)Four Rooms. Wiener Dog's life was a completely different experience than Ted the Bellhop's long night. The former didn't quite hold up for me as well as I was hoping for.

The story and acting here are both pretty hit or miss, for me... the entire first family was a big miss for me. The child was probably the best of the three, and he wasn't good. The story was at least semi interesting because of how shitty of parents they were. The kid is a cancer survivor, gets a puppy, and has it taken to be put down within a matter of days, all while getting bad life lessons from his mother. D

Enter Greta Gerwig... as the vet tech/nurse who saves Wiener Dog, now Doo Dee, from death. I thought Gerwig was great here, especially next to Kieran Culkin's pretty meh performance. Connor Long and Bridget Brown were great, though... and I really liked this story. There was some awkwardness with awkward people, some humor, and a good bit of feeling throughout... also, Postal 2. A-

The intermission was more annoying than anything... while I was amused with Wiener Dog Doo Dee over some of the green screen backdrops.. just nah. But more so, did I just simply miss how the dog went from the couple to Dr. Schmerz? I suppose I don't need to know how he got her, as much as wanting to know what happened with them, and why couldn't they keep Doo Dee?

Devito was fantastic, as expecting, but the story in general didn't do much for me. The only part that I really liked was the end... smug ass white student with her I Can't Breathe shirt.. and Wiener Dog walking around in a her dress strapped with explosive C-

Which leaves Wiener Dog to the elderly Nana... as we come full circle and she's named Cancer. I loved Ellen Burstyn here, as Nana, and Zosia Mamet was plenty fine as Zoe. Overall, however, this felt like a fairly average sequence that was brought down by the end... The dream sequence seemed completely out of place, and there's no way Fantasy put that dog back together so well after so many cars.... there was nothing but her damn tail left... but whatever. C+

So yeah, I didn't hate Wiener Dog, but it wasn't a continuous enjoyable experience. I feel like the acting and story add up to a pretty bland C/C+ movie, but I really liked a love of the shots and color of the locations, so I'm going to lean toward the generous side and a shakey thumbs up overall...

C+

12 Comments

Admin

12/1/2016 11:51:17 pm

Reserved for direct replies

Bryan

12/2/2016 10:10:55 pm

Did you appreciate the conversation in the car between mother and child (part of your D grade section)? Maybe it's just a parent thing having had similar conversations with Jane.

Bobby

12/2/2016 11:54:45 pm

Eh, a part of it... but mostly I disliked the mother completely, and the shit she was telling her kid. In the car was better than what she was telling him at home, if i remember correctly.

12/2/2016 11:55:50 pm

And the further removed from the first act, the less I dislike it, maybe a D+/C- there, but still wasn't good.

Drew

12/2/2016 12:57:55 am

Was laughter meant to take place in this film? Oh.....

The Wiener Dog put the spotlight on a Dachshund that traveled from person to person in some fashion and added a missing value to his/her life. That missing value was adding companionship and/or unconditional love to its owner and when that was fulfilled, it was as if the dog would leave and be placed with another person who needed its love and devotion. When examined from that perspective, it was a continuous story with purposeful plot holes such as the dog with the vet technician only to suddenly appear with Dr. Schmerz after intermission and later the elderly woman without explanation.

The other way to view Wiener Dog was four different stories that were connected to the dog in which the dog served a specific purpose in each act. The dog was a metaphor for companionship with the boy, joy with the vet technician and the family, teaching moment with Dr. Schmerz, and life with Nana.

The best part of the film was DeVito's "act." He kept harping his film students to think about a method that worked for him but could possibly be outdated for the generation of film students. As they swam in their smugness laughing at Dr. Schmerz, the students finally saw what he tried to teach them. Viewers were able to see that on their faces after they muttered the question "what if?" Perfect line.

The last part with the elderly woman was a tip of the hat to the film's beginning because the dog's named Cancer, which was what the boy survived. Viewers had an idea as to how this would go; either the lady or the dog would die. It was not a complete shock to see Solondz choice for that but viewers should have caught the metaphor.

Now, the film as a whole, had some dark humor peppered in but it was not funny. The jokes fell flat, were too heavy handed, and/or terribly misplaced. There was, however, some subtlety and those few moments were well timed. But the other attempts at humor were in poor taste and just plain bad.

In terms of narration, Solondz's style was unique but this approach can be a "love it" or "hate it" depending on the film. With that stated, this film simply did not need his weird touch. The interpretive dance Solondz did was off the mark and easily could have left viewers in the weeds. In storytelling, there exists a fine line between creative and weird and Solondz went down the weird path in The Wiener Dog. Had it not been for the DeVito "act," The Wiener Dog would be another silly artsy film but even with DeVito, Solondz swung but only tipped it foul.

Grade: C-

12/2/2016 02:11:16 pm

The first half of this film was genuinely good. I love dogs and I could have watched the expressions of this dog for 90 minutes. The laughs - wiener dog trying to run away when at the vet and they step on the leash, the mention of wild dog rape, and poor croissant's death. In general the first half was worth watching.

Intermission was a WTF moment then the dog magically showed up with Danny Devito and was not seen much after. The only redeeming scene in the second half was the bomb squad and the dog. The rest, including the truck accident, was complete garbage. The truck even could have been fine, but the follow ups were trash.

1st half A-, 2nd half F. Overall C-

12/2/2016 10:06:26 pm

Yeah, if the movie just ended before the intermission, I would have given it a B to B+... but nooooope.

Jon

12/6/2016 01:50:36 am

Wiener-Dog works best as a Todd Solondz movie. His filmography forms a loosely-connected universe of taboo relationships and maladjusted individuals. He's made sequels to his films that replaced the entire cast with different actors, and Greta Gerwig's character here is the adult version of a teenage character in an earlier one of his movies. Wiener-Dog sticks to his themes of isolation, children asking adult questions and getting adult answers, and the general malaise that most of society lives with, so as Bobby alludes to, if you like a Solondz movie, you'll probably like this one, too. On the other hand, if you have no familiarity with him, I totally get why this doesn't land.

Solondz usually works with ensemble casts that all have some relationship to each other, though I don't believe he's ever done an anthology type film before. He keeps the ensemble cast but jettisons any human connection between them, with the exception of Wiener Dog, which I don't think is a great link. While each of her four owners are all trying to ineffectually patch over some deficiency in their lives with a pet, there's still the re-introductory period during each segment that slows the film down, a period usually further hampered by the sloppy resolution to the previous segment that just encourages the viewer to wonder what happened next instead of jumping headfirst into the new characters. It's distracting, and I'd also call it a crutch, neither of which makes the film better.

That said, I was charmed by pretty much every portion of Wiener-Dog. Adults not sugar-coating difficult subjects to children, or even better, telling horrifying stories of dog rape and stillbirths to illustrate a point, is essentially my approach to dealing with kids dialed a bit higher, and I appreciate seeing it onscreen. Kieran Culkin and Connor Long combine for a surprisingly affecting scene in the second segment. I'm totally fine with Danny Devito being humiliated onscreen, as he has become typecast as Frank Reynolds from Always Sunny in my mind and I can't help but wish bad things upon him. Also, dog in a suicide vest! Finally, Ellen Burstyn is always great in whatever she does, and I'll be damned if hipster-incarnate Zosia Mamet wasn't able to get me emotionally invested. Add in the absurd intermission and the so-cruel-it's-funny ending, and I can only say I had fun with this film, not exactly something I'd expect from the guy behind Happiness.

However, I am still going to give this my lowest positive grade of a C+ based on how it felt like Solondz gave up in the second half. The prologue and the first segment are masterpieces of framing and production, with all its sharp corner and straight lines. By the time Devito's made it onscreen, it feels completely different. I don't think it's a question of tone, as the first segment isn't markedly sadder than the third, but that third segment feels cinematically dead in a way I'm just not knowledgeable to describe. Things recover slightly by the fourth segment, but it still doesn't feel right. If this was on purpose for some thematic reason, I would put that in the category of films giving themselves excuses to be crappy a la 'The LEGO Movie is allowed to have a disjointed story because a kid is making it all up.' In the aggregate, I did enjoy Wiener-Dog even as it baffled me in some cases, and I think the better movie tied the characters together in a more coherent fashion.

12/6/2016 03:14:51 pm

You've lost me when you say, "Wiener-Dog works best as a Todd Solondz movie."

No grade of a movie should be influenced by past or present work of the director. If Michael Bay makes a cute romantic comedy tomorrow, he shouldn't be dinged for making the Transformers Remake.

12/6/2016 06:09:51 pm

I say that meaning the tone on this is specific to its director. He's not stretching himself by making a decidedly different movie from earlier ones hes made. The plot and structure of Wiener-Dog is unique to Solondz, but the tone is very familiar. I like that tone, so I like this movie.

Lane

12/6/2016 09:34:54 pm

I really didn’t like this film. I’m not a Todd Solondz fan, and this did nothing to change my mind. I can appreciate the whimsy and whim of the filmmaking, but when there’s nothing at stake at all in the narrative, why should the audience even care?

Vignette movies aren’t really my thing, anyway. There are a few I enjoy, and find moving or entertaining—Tarantino films and “Babel” come to mind—but for the most part, I find them to be distracting; as if the director or writer couldn’t quite let go of the best ideas they had in film school and just had to find ways (and funding) to get them on tape. Solondz is obviously not a novice, but I still have a hard time getting on board with the low stakes film making.

The first vignette in “Weiner Dog” was just terrible, and the second improved only marginally. The acting was bad, the settings were unconvincing. It wasn’t until Danny DeVito’s third section that I found I even cared about anything that was happening. But wow, that third scene really made me care. DeVito played Schmerz to a tee and I found myself wishing the whole movie had been about him. Solondz nails the pretense of high art and higher education. Ellen Burstyn and Zosia Mamet were great in the final scenes, but at this point, too much damage has been done.

This film also made the best case I’ve seen in a while for why shooting on film still matters; I recognize that the team was trying to do some outlandish stuff with color and palette here, but the effect fails in my opinion. The greens and pinks here do more distracting than narrating, and the digital harshness of the cinematography totally killed my buzz.

So, let’s see…I give a D for the first two vignettes, an A for the third, and a C+ for the fourth. No, wait…make that a C because the ending said and meant nothing and I’m not sure why anyone would care. So, average that out, and I give the film a C+. Seems we are all pretty much in the same grade boat on this one, though obviously we're sitting in different sections.

Shane

1/9/2017 04:31:33 pm

Greta Gerwig plays a hipster. Shhhhhhhocking. Her quarter alone knocks this movie down a letter grade.

DeVito is solid in his role, but that quarter of the movie is way too preachy and doesn't drive home its point well enough. I would have watched more of this story had it had a longer running time and it actually fleshed out the "dumb millennials."

The final quarter was pretty good and the ending was absolutely fantastic.

The first quarter was thoroughly depressing. The 5 minute poop trail just didn't work on me.

C+

Weiner-Dog

C
2.11

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Weiner-Dog

C​2.11

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C
2.11