Dog Park
Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney
Year: 1998
Available on video
Character: Jeff (Bruce) and Dr. Cavan (Mark)
Other cast: Luke Wilson, Natasha Henstridge, Kathleen Robertson, Jeneane Garofalo, Kristen Lehman, Mark McKinney
Producer: Susan Cavan
Director: Bruce McCulloch
Writer: Bruce McCulloch
Musical Score: Craig Northey
Lions Gate
R; 91 minutes
-Plot summary-
A sex comedy about a sweet man losing his girlfriend to another man. He has an attraction to a young kids tv show hostess who thinks he is just some jerk. He loses his dog to his ex-girlfriend when she moves out. Along the way he finds out a dirty little secret about his two best friends through his new overwhelming girlfriend.
-Production Notes-
Won a Genie Award for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role" (Mark McKinney). Nominated for "Best Screenplay, Original" (Bruce McCulloch).
-Review-
By Sabine McDonald
Ah, romance. Is there anything better than that four-legged beast? According to the Bruce McCulloch film Dog Park, sharing it with your beloved pooch makes it an on-earth paradise. The sweet and occasionally clumsy interactions between the love-doped humans, a spacey dog psychologist, and of course, the cute little pups make the film all worthwhile watching for 90 minutes. Plus, McCulloch's writing gives you something to giggle about if you're a part of the Dating Chain (which you are, even if you didn't know it) or a dog owner/person.
Average guy Andy (Luke Wilson) just broke up with his philandering girlfriend, Sheryl (Kathleen Robertson), who also gained custody of Andy's collie, Mogley. During the mourning period of losing his beloved dog, Andy meets Lorna (Natasha Henstridge) at a singles bar. They go through an awkward and trite enough meeting where they realize they're perfect for each other. Lorna, however, is still emotionally scarred from a previous (and disasterous) relationship with the man Sheryl is now seeing, and refuses to begin a relationship with Andy.
Andy continually pursues Lorna in the dog park along with Mogley on his joint custody visits. Andy's life is also made less comfortable with the constant cloying of his best friends, Jeff and Jeri (McCulloch and Janeane Garafolo), who are always there to give Andy advice about love and how to maintain a "perfect" relationship.
McCulloch, who is most famous from TV's Kids in the Hall, wrote the screenplay and made his directorial debut with the film, creating a realistic and most often times hilarious script. He quietly implicates that the characters who search for romance love their dogs more than they love their significant others. Dog parks, as McCulloch quoted, are "kind of like the bar scenes of the '90s."
The movie did have its fair share of used, soft-rock background music, along with weakened performances by Wilson and Robertson. However, two performances worth mentioning are Mark McKinney's and Harland Williams's more than comical roles. McKinney, also of Kids in the Hall fame, played Mogley's psychiatrist with hilarious gusto, whose life is dedicated to dogs, but whose tolerance level for humans is zero. He even went as far to help Lorna's dog, Peanut, be trained by offering the mongrel "doggie crack cocaine." Harland Williams also delivered a laughable performance as a demented hackey-sacker who tries to get a date with Lorna (basically, in a stalker-like way).
Besides the lousy choice for a music score and slow beginning, Dog Park boasts numerous amounts of laughs from the human characters and coos for the cute doggies onscreen. The film showed both of these views on romance: how love can be found almost anywhere, even when you take a walk with your dog, or, as a quote from the film describes, "love is not your scuba buddy."
Official Canadian website (not much works)
Official American website (not much there)
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Filmography||Front (No Frames)