Mon chien Stupide

If you like french movies, you will like this one. It has a smart and funny dialog, mainly by the actor/director Yvan Attal. His wife (in the movie and in real life), actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, is a bit overly dramatic at the beginning but plays well the rest of the movie. The story in not plausible (a dog that settle at their home and likes to hump guys), but it did not bother me. The story is not original - a writer that has a writer's block and writes about his current situation; still, it interesting, how each chapter is about one of their kids or other family issues the writer experiences. The movie is a bit too long, feels a bit slow in the middle, but then, gets back on track. Good acting; good cinematography; good direction = an enjoyable movie.

The first part deftly blends comedy with drama;director/actor Attal uses a classic comic situation for something it was not meant for: the (very big) dog settles down in a bourgeois house and the family cannot get rid of this burdensome animal ; but dad ,a writer who has been suffering from cramp for years , is fed up with his depressed wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and his restless offspring : three boys and a girl ;the dog becomes his true mate ,he calls him "Stupid" (in the title ,it's really a proper noun).There's a lot of humor ,as this dog has a tendency to sexually assault the male persons;although Attal uses and abuses the voice over to tell us how he feels nostagic for his days in Rome ,where he was able to let his inspiration flow, but it was before he was a family man,the movie survives the intellectual intentions .

With a few exceptions,the second part is preachy,edifying ,sophomoric and dull ,as tedious as Miss Gainsbourg's lecture on Musset' "Lorenzaccio" ; the story becomes predictable , implausible (the essays ), and " you -shall- be- a- man ,my son " in the grand tradition of Kipling; all the lines between the born again writer and his editor have been heard at least a hundred times or more by the average viewer: it's the last line , thanks one more time to this good old dog ,which saves it from the pure cliché .It's also the presence of the pet which saves the improbable scene between the professor and the writer .The story drags on and on , with a little help from the music ,a lovely variation on Lennon/McCartney's "and I love her"in the last sequences,nicely filmed .

Dedicated to director Claude Berri.

I have to admit the beginning, well after the initial voice over, so the beginning as in the first real scene in the house, is quite something. Great dialog, super funny and it feels quite light. But as with life in general it does not stay that way. And by that I don't just mean the dialog but the mood and lightness the movie had at first - or seemed to have.

The acting is superb and the script/dialog throughout is quite something to behold. The relationships seem as realistic depicted as they can be. Even if you don't agree with one of the characters the motivations for their actions are clear cut. They all make sense. And in between all of them ... a dog. You might love that or hate it (I know one person who is not impressed with pets or animals at all - so no winning over for her) ... and that is before thinking about all the drama that lies within the movie

Yvan Attal did a good job with this one, both as the director and as an actor. Charlotte Gainsbourg made me realize I'm getting old. Having known her since being the little daughter of Serge Gainsbourg to a mature good actress, many years passed by since then. Mon Chien Stupide (or My Dog Stupid for the English title) is a good dramady, easy to watch, and entertaining enough, certainly for this genre. Melancholy, difficult parenthood, existential life answers and questions, and a dog, those are the ingredients. The acting was good and that from the whole cast, even the big Mastiff. Good cinematography too, a movie with nothing really bad to write about. Don't expect anything fast paced though, it's mostly conversations between family members, the daily family arguments, but it's sometimes emotional and recognizable. Worth a watch.

Excellent film. Completely different from what I expected. Maybe hit too close to home. I was thinking comedy. It had very funny moments, but the overall film, was real life. Family. Expectations. Disappointments. Love.