Let slip the dogs of comedy
By David Wildman

Molly Shannon is too old to be tumbling over bleachers and flashing her panties the way she did on Saturday Night Live. Her days of wearing plaid miniskirts and sniffing her armpits may be over, but there’s a lot more to Shannon than goofball sketch comedy. In Year of the Dog, she has succeeded in making the difficult transition from mugging for laughs to starring in an engaging, multidimensional role.

Shannon is disturbingly convincing as Peggy, a frumpy secretary whose puppy seems to be the most important thing in her dull, unremarkable life. When the pet dies, she flips out, suddenly forced to break out of her cloistered existence. She starts by going on a date with her mild-mannered, gun-loving neighbor (John C. Reilly). Peggy also adopts a nasty, drooling dog with “behavioral problems” as a replacement for her pooch and falls for the animal’s sexually ambiguous trainer, Newt (Peter Sarsgaard). They embark on a relationship that revolves entirely around their animals, and she soon finds herself wrapped up in his crusade to find homes for strays. Her ardor for Newt grinds to a halt when he claims to be celibate, but he’s sparked something within her: Peggy takes on the activist role herself, and her budding fanaticism about saving every dog she sets eyes on puts her job and personal relationships at risk.

It shouldn’t be so surprising to see Shannon in a role like this. Since she did her last pratfall on SNL in 2001, she’s been steadily carving out a place for herself on TV and the big screen. And unlike her high-profile contemporaries Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, who went on to lucrative roles playing extensions of the moronic personas they minted on late-night TV, Shannon set up few such expectations in her six-year stint on the show. Prior to the show, she’d been a serious struggling film actress who jumped at the chance of leaping onto the SNL springboard. The exposure did for her what Full House did for Bob Saget, only in reverse: Saget was a foul-mouthed standup who became saddled with a nice-guy rep, and Shannon became best known for her tomfoolery. Now she’s ready to be taken seriously.

Shannon’s earnest yet lightly playful performance helps to bring verve to what on paper looks like midlife-crisis yawner. Her likeable loser holds your attention as she develops into a polarizing figure you’ll either see as shrill and obnoxious or noble as she sticks to her beliefs, no matter the consequences. The supporting cast is effective, too. Sarsgaard is amiably creepy as the militantly vegan dog trainer whose favorite pet has no back legs and runs around strapped to a cart. Laura Dern is just the right mix of catty and caring as Peggy’s sister-in-law, who excessively dotes on her own children. And Regina King is hilarious as Peggy’s vivacious coworker Layla, who, in her moronically condescending but well-meaning way, urges Peggy to go out and meet a man: “Even retarded cripple people get married.”

Year of the Dog’s other secret weapon is writer and first-time director Mike White. He provides the steady, even hand that was evident in his script for The Good Girl, an enjoyable film starring John C. Reilly and Jennifer Aniston. The film managed the seemingly impossible trick of making Aniston seem palatable—talented, even. In directing Year of the Dog, White keeps the visuals simple, drawing us into Peggy’s world with a documentary-style technique in which characters speak directly to the camera.

While the plot is nothing shocking or unpredictable, Year of the Dog manages to deftly bob and weave around cliché. We never learn whether Peggy’s search for canine companionship is about sublimating the need for a child or a significant other; all we know for sure is that she just really, really likes dogs more than anything or anyone else in her life, to the point where her fixation spirals completely out of control. Ultimately, this surprising little film steers clear of typical romantic-comedy pitfalls and saccharine sentimentality to emerge as a clever and lightly humorous study of the dark roots of obsession.

YEAR OF THE DOG
RATED | PG-13
NOW PLAYING | EDWARDS UNIVERSITY, IRVINE and THE GROVE STADIUM 14, LOS ANGELES