Lawn Dogs

Pros: Attention to detail, characterization, photography, story, acting.
Cons: None, unless you count the awful description on the box at the videostore.

Having now seen Lawn Dogs for the third time, I am quite sure that this 1997 film is my favor ...

Pros: Incisive, fresh, funny, genuine.
Cons: Magical-realism fantasy ending feels like a bit of a cop-out.

In my ever-changing rotation of movie-star future husbands, there are some tried-and-true names that ...

Pros: Almost everything
Cons: Open to interpretation as justifying paedophilia

Lawn Dogs, a story about the relationship between Devon, a 10-year-old girl from a highly affluent gated community, and, Trent, a poor man in his early 20s who mows their lawns and lives in a run-down trailer in a nearby wood, is perhaps the best film I ...

Pros: thought provoking, nice cinematography
Cons: may be difficult for the conservative or concrete minded

Here's a movie that deserves praise enough to warrant my being the one to give it, which should suffice as reason enough (I'm lazy) to see it. Lawn Dogs is a fairy tale set in modern Kentucky, in an impossibly aristocratic suburban housing community ...

Pros: Good acting, good scenery & photography, rewarding but unlikely friendship
Cons: Characters without motivation

The movie was a dog.

Not to say that it had no redeeming features - the friendship between the young girl and the lawn man was endearing, if improbable. And the girl herself was a real sweetie, and a good actress - perfect for the part. In fact, the acting all around was admirable.

But the script! Yikes! Not a single character in the whole movie - with the partial exceptions of the two protagonists - had any motivation for anything they did. People acting awkward or mean (in fact, just about everyone in the movie other than said two was not just mean, but nasty), or spiteful, or stupid, for no reason at all!

It seems as though somehow, the movie could have been good, but didn't quite make it. Given a significant rewrite, it could be watchable.

I came away from Lawn Dogs (Yawn Dogs?) feeling not at all enriched. Puzzled, perhaps, at why anyone would make such a movie. Well, there was that admirable, unlikely friendship. But that was all.

Pass this one by.

PS. I described this movie as "Better than watching TV", but anything is better than watching TV.