This movie really made me feel good about being a pet lover and owner. Hope other's take time to watch it to the end.

I created an account on IMDB just to warn everyone how terrible this film is. Not only is the film extremely depressing, BUT not one, not two, but THREE dogs are killed throughout the course of the movie. To those "critics" that say this is a motivational film and that the main character finds herself, the main character legitimately goes off the deep end and should be in bankruptcy & jail. The main character steals money from her boss and literally has no repercussion. She gets her job back only to quit again. She may be touring the world for animal rights but who is paying for this?? She has no income and her house is trashed from adopting 15 dogs at once (and that's not even the craziest part of the story). She also attacks her neighbor with a knife, and doesn't get jail time. To whoever called this movie "heartwarming", you my friend are a psychopath. AVOID THIS MOVIE IF YOU EVER WANT TO EXPERIENCE HAPPINESS.

Usually when people make movies they do that for a specific reason. To entertain, to tell a tale, to make a point. This movie has none of those.Although labeled a comedy, not one scene in this movie is funny or even amusing. On the contrary, the majority of scenes are sad, dull and even disturbing. Not only that this movie isn't about dogs; this movie even isn't about the people. There is no specific story or plot, as if the scenes are randomly piled upon each other, giving the impression that something is going on but nothing actually happens.In the end, one would think that there should be an epilogue or any kind of explanation for this confusing story. There isn't. Except in case that the director's idea was actually to put the audience into a state of deep depression and psychosis.This is truly a sad and deranged creation and shouldn't even be called a movie.

This is the story of an unhappy woman, her inability to find love or fulfillment in the world and her descent into being one of those crazy animal hoarders you see on the news. Oh, and did I mention it's a light hearted comedy?Peggy Slade (Molly Shannon) is the unhappy woman. She doesn't have a boyfriend and hasn't had one for a long time. At work, she's the assistant to a boss (Josh Pais) who is perpetually paranoid about his standing in office politics and talks to Peggy more like a therapist than an employee. She sees her friend Layla (Regina King) working hard to domesticate her immature boyfriend and get him to propose. When Peggy goes to visit her brother and sister-in-law (Tom McCarthy and Laura Dern), she's regaled with the horror stories of being the parents of two young children.There may have been a point when Peggy was living her life, but now she's just observing hers and everyone else's. She does have a little dog named Pencil that she pours all of her love into and while even that doesn't really make her happy, Peggy seems to have come to terms with what her life is. But then Pencil gets into the neighbor's yard, eats something poisonous, dies and Peggy loses her way. She reaches out again and again to find something that can recreate the unexamined stasis she and Pencil had forged in her unhappy life. First, it's her next door neighbor (John C. Reily), then it's the cute but romantically sterile guy who works for the SPCA (Peter Sarsgaard), then it's an abused dog named Valentine she tries to help, then it's the cause of animal rights before finally, desperately adopting 15 dogs from the pound to keep them from being put to sleep. All the while, Peggy becomes more and more unraveled, emotionally and physically, until she sinks into psychotically violent anger.As I mentioned, this is a comedy, even though the story as described sounds more tragic than humorous. There is a lot of funny stuff in Year of the Dog and it's a tender sort of humor. The film doesn't mock or belittle Peggy and the other characters. Well, it does poke a little fun at Peggy's next door neighbor because he's a hunter and at the mundane parental obsessions of her brother and sister-in-law, but those characters are also presented as the most emotionally healthy and well-adjusted people in the movie. The story's damaged and dysfunctional characters are treated with a gentle respect. We're able to laugh with those characters without them becoming the butt of the joke.Molly Shannon does a fine job as Peggy, giving a much subtler performance than you would expect given the rest of her comedy work. Shannon keeps an undercurrent of sadness constantly bubbling in everything Peggy does or says, without reducing her to pitiful, laughable wreck. Peter Sarsgaard gives a very well-measured performance as a man who seems more socially capable and functional than Peggy on the surface but who is deep down even more emotionally broken than she is. Josh Pais is also very good as Peggy's boss. He's the most overtly comedic character in the story but Pais never lets him become a caricature.The direction in this film is a bit odd. For most dialog scenes between two characters, the movie cuts back and forth between the characters talking directly into the camera instead of showing them talking to each other. It's a technique that's both intimate and somewhat alienating. You feel as though the characters are talking directly to you, the viewer. Yet, that makes it difficult to connect what's being said by one character with the effect those words are having on the other character. It brings you more into the story and takes you more out of it at the same time.Year of the Dog is a movie that's sad without being sappy and funny without being mean. Its ending is an almost total cop out that doesn't realistically deal with any of the themes and issues raised throughout the story, but it's very enjoyable up to that. If you're a dog lover and you're looking for a dog movie that isn't a children's story or a romantic comedy, this is the film for you.