It's inaccurate to call this a comedy expecting there to be humor. The most entertaining part was the "intermission." The story line is broken into four parts, each of which is more depressing than the prior one. I searched for but didn't find any real connection between the parts other than that each one featured an individual who owned a dachshund. Some of the segment endings were very upsetting if you like dogs.I guess the acting and photography was good, but that's about all.

If you love Wiener-dogs you should never ever watch this movie. It is just awful how this poor dog was treated from the very beginning of the film. Every character was completely ignorant of how a Wiener-dog should be treated. The entire movie was maddening garbage. Anyone who can watch this movie and derive some type of enjoyment should really go see a therapist.

If 'Wiener-dog' caught your eye because you're someone who loved 'Old Yeller', 'Beethoven' or 'Benji', I strongly recommend you avoid it. This film *isn't* a cookie cutter romanticisation of man's best friend.Having said that, 'Wiener-dog' is not without heart. There are many tender moments and pet lovers who can stomach Solondz's jet black humour will find it rewarding and with much to digest.'Wiener-dog' is Todd Solondz's eight film and a strong return to form. Fashioning a dachshund as a device to link 4 vignettes, Solondz continues his examination of the absurdities of life in the burbs.Of the vignettes, the standout is the first. It centers on a sickly boy who is given a dog by his father to lift his spirits and deploys the boy's innocence to question the way we treat pets.In this piece, Solondz incisively points his blowtorch towards the practices of neutering and euthanasia, suggesting they can be more to do with the owner's interests than the pets. Of course, he makes his case with satire, and without being preachy, and boy did he have me laughing many times.An inspired choice was to set this construct in an idyllic, architecturally designed house. The boy's parents argue over having the dog indoors, while beyond the window, the boy and dog joyfully play on a manicured lawn. It seems the dog has done the trick in raising the boy's spirits, yet the parents are at each other over concerns that their rug might be soiled.The scene is a classic Solondz musing: selfishness triumphing over all else; in this case, the worries of being fastidious over the worries of being a parent.I expect Solondz aimed to make us see ourselves in these parents, but as is his charm, he wants us to laugh at ourselves and not feel judged. By staging it as a comical tableau, I thought he did so marvelously well.The second installment picks up on Dawn Weiner's story from 'Welcome to the Dollhouse'.After killing her in 'Palindromes', Solondz bucks slavish adherence to continuity, and adds a touching chapter to Indie film's most unpopular seventh grader.This vignette is most notable for picking up on the neutering theme explored earlier. Dawn visits Brandon's recently married down-syndrome brother and we learn that, just like wiener-dog, he and his wife have been 'fixed'. Solondz presents this without weighing in with an opinion on eugenics and you feel as though he's saying I'll leave it to you whether you'll add it in *your* equation. I thought that masterful.After a faux intermission, we settle upon the film's funniest stanza: the frustrations of Professor Smertz.Smertz is a failed screenwriter who teaches at a school for the arts. I'll wager that Solondz has modeled this character on himself. He teaches filmmaking like Smertz, and you can't help but feel he mined his own experiences to flesh out the Professor.Smertz – played with pathos by Danny De Vito – had a hit 20 years ago, but can't even get his agent to *read* his screenplays nowadays, let alone broker them.In between being brushed off, he suffers the sophomoric notions of his wannabee filmmaker students and it's here that Solondz has much fun. He roasts the vacuous world of Marvel movies, the phonies who claim they're cinephiles and the know-it-all types who can't handle criticism, while all the while trumpeting what a waste of time art school is for most, especially those who don't have the sensibility, let alone talent.In the end, Smertz falls on his own sword to make a point, and though it's not a totally satisfying punchline (it involves strapping a bomb to the dachshund!), it serves adequately enough.After surviving the bomb scare, wiener-dog becomes the pet of a misanthropic old woman played by Ellen Burstyn. She is visited by her parasitic, dysfunctional granddaughter and her artsy boyfriend, and we soon learn that just like the last time she dropped in 4 years ago, she is after a hand out.Solondz milks this for all he can and had me squirming as the granddaughter contorts and hyper-extends herself to cajole her grandmother into thinking she is worthy of assistance.A little later, wiener-dog has wandered off, and in crossing a busy road, is mowed down by a truck. Solondz then has another truck trample over it, and then for shock value, a supped-up car blaring music, followed by a mini.I marveled over this audaciousness.I think most would have thought it cold, but Solondz is after bigger fish than appeasing sensitivities. Further, he is not laughing at a pet being steamrolled here, he is saying we live in a world where pets *are* steamrolled, and sometimes just for the "fun" of it.The drivers who flatten our pets while getting from A to B have no regard for the back story of the animal. Some because they don't have the time and some because they don't have the inclination. Some are rushing to make a deadline and some are pathological. Some veer at the last second to avoid it and some zero in sadistically towards it. That's our world.But Solondz isn't just out to make you think about that, he dares you to laugh at a construct involving this regrettable morsel of everyday life. By putting the mini as an addendum to the sequence, he's saying, "I know you've invested a lot of in this animal, but I'll bet I can find a way for you to betray your feelings." He did with me. I couldn't help finding the mini funny, just because a mini following two trucks and a supped up car is damn hilarious - even when flattening an endearing animal I'd grown to love over the course of an hour and a half.Todd Solondz 1, Me 0.

Spoiler. But I wish I had seen a spoiler for this movie. I wish I had known that the wiener dog runs into traffic and gets RUN OVER BY A TRUCK ON SCREEN and then run over again and again on screen before wasting 2 hours of my life watching this. I cannot un-see this now and it will play over and over in my mind for days to come now. Very upsetting. I should have had a clue when one of the characters straps a ticking bomb on the wiener dog in the previous vignette; I had a feeling... if I saw this film in a theater I would have walked out. I cannot believe it has even 5 stars--the characters are absolutely horrible. There's nothing redeeming whatsoever about this movie which is disappointing considering how much I loved Welcome To The Doll House. WTF? AWFUL and I will have nightmares for weeks now.