Man's Best Friend?

With its catchy (if arguably distasteful) title and first-rate cast, How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog promises vastly more than it delivers. An L.A.-based Brit playwright in a slump (Kenneth Branagh) tries to fix his latest play, while arguing with his wife (Robin Wright Penn) about whether to have a baby. To make things worse, the neighbor's dog won't stop barking at night--hence the title--and there's a homeless lunatic (Jared Harris) hanging about the area, trying to steal his identity. Despite his crusty exterior, our hero begins to change when an adorable pre-adolescent moppet (Suzi Hofrichter) moves in next door.

Local zeroes: Peter Riegert and Kenneth Branagh are stuck in a TV movie playing on the big screen.

Related Content

• Descendants Ascends to Top of DFW Crix List
  December 16, 2011
• USA Film Festival Releases Full Schedule, Special Guests (McDowell! Fichtner! Corbin!)
  April 13, 2011
• Drue Mitchell Rides the Airwaves From DFW to L.A.
  December 6, 2011
• 2012 Oscar Nominations, Complete with Snubs, Surprises, and Mehs
  January 25, 2012
• The Grammy Awards: My Top 10 Observer-ations
  February 14, 2011

More About

• Kenneth Branagh
• Suzi Hofrichter
• Michael Kalesniko
• Robin Wright Penn
• Jared Harris

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

After his theater colleagues agree that the child character in his play--always offstage, but crucial nonetheless--is unconvincing, he starts hanging out with Amy for research. You can see where this is going: Irascible curmudgeon, initially interested only in exploiting a little girl for his art, is won over by her charm and unearths the paternal instinct long buried beneath his cynical exterior.

The feature directorial debut of Michael Kalesniko (co-writer of Howard Stern's Private Parts) isn't a total wipeout, but it's easy to see why the film initially went straight to the Starz! cable network. (Less obvious is the rationale behind this theatrical release, only a month before the DVD is due in stores.) Branagh is always fun to watch, and I'm in favor of any film that keeps the wonderful Peter Riegert, veteran of Animal House and Local Hero, in front of the camera. Hofrichter is suitably winning, while Lynn Redgrave does the best she can with her tired material. And although this particular thematic arc is well-worn--having worked previously in Silas Marner, Little Miss Marker, several John Ford films and roughly a million other sentimental narratives--it's practically foolproof, and it doesn't fail here, either.

But Kalesniko doesn't bring much new to the ancient tried-and-true story of a curmudgeon's heart melted by an adorable child, and he mucks things up with some clunky exposition and a narrative structure that comes across more as random than as intriguingly complex. There is nothing feloniously awful about the whole thing, but the laughs are tepid and too infrequent. Last year's Maybe Baby offered a much funnier take on a similar plot.