Seattle International Film Festival - David Jeffers for Tablet Magazine SIFFblog

rdjeffers

Saturday June 11, 6:45pm Uptown Theater Sunday June 12, 1:45pm Uptown Theater

"You can pull a hair out of your arse, but you can't pull a rabbit."

Smalltime gangsters, bookies, gamblers, various nefarious henchmen and their assorted weapons served up in a thick dialect we Americans can just barely understand most of the time with an underdog hero who scrambles his way through fast breaking mishaps in a race to survive and make the "Big Score." Sound familiar? There was this Brit a few years back that made two hysterically funny flicks. He married some big pop star, made an awful turd of a movie with her and then all but disappeared. Ever since then I've been waiting for this same guy to come back with more like the first two. Well, there is a new movie. The catch is someone else made it. But if you're starving for a film in the same genre this is it with both barrels. Mo Chara sells everything under the damp gray Dublin sky from the back of his van but longs for bigger and better things. When a local bookie gives him a dog in exchange for a favor Mo and his mates are off to the races, the dog track that is, and a load of trouble. Director Paddy Breathnach uses all the slick polished and edgy style you remember in those other movies, funny character names like Mooney the Looney, Old Bland Joe, and his gorilla Sixteen Cracked Ribs, clever dialogue, a hip upbeat pop score, a ton of camera and editing trickery, and it works! A good solid storyline told in first person narrative by Mo, with a collection of mishaps and quirky friends propels us along what becomes a very satisfying and funny story. The stoner of the group Paulsy, nicknamed "Cerebral", delivers a hilarious pitch to an old lady who's advertised her cat in the classifieds. Of course kitty is part of another scheme to run all the dogs off the track in the middle of a race. Mo and his friends answer another ad for their first dog, go to a broken down old trailer and are given a pooch that looks equally bad. "Handsome is as handsome does" quips the dog's grimy owner. Mo soon dispatches this dog however, to the disapproval of his mates. There are some moments of dispassionate cruelty, "Come on Boots. Dead dog walking," but we never see it on screen and the tone of the film shows more sentimental fondness for dogs than abuse. Recall the treatment of dogs in those other movies and this also is very similar. The boys are threatened with their lives more than once. A close-up of meat extruding from a large grinder pulls back to show them hanging on hooks in a cooler. In another scene they are taken for a ride to a quarry only to cut a deal at the last minute. When they finally get the right dog, Cerberus, named for the hound that guards the gates of hell, he has to work his way up to the big race. When the dog loses Mo's friends sell him to some thugs, change their minds and steal him back only to be chased down bumpy roads in Mo's van by guns, a crossbow and an enormous chainsaw ending in a game of chicken they ultimately win, "Balls on them boys like Bengal tigers!" Man About Dog starts off with a bang but goes a bit thin toward the middle, it is unoriginal and very predictable but is none the less a great ride. In the Q and A after the film Breathnach had some funny antidotes about working with the dogs and also said he has no US distribution. His other films I Went Down and Blowdry are available and I plan on checking them out. Lets hope someone snatches this up so everyone has a chance to see it.

score 7/10

rdjeffers 18 July 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1129909/