Dead Pet

Jake Thompson returns home for summer to find out that his parents have spent his college trust fund on the family pet poodle Miko. I did not know a family could generate a college fund-enough to educate a child at Harvard-from collecting old cans.

How Jake could get into Harvard one will never know. How Jake attracts two women while swilling beer in a kiddie pool is more unfathomable.

But all of this is okay because Jake lives in an alternate reality not accessible without ingesting heavy amounts of narcotics.

Take this movie as a random melange of vignettes, all unrelated to one another and the movies captures amusing oddities of american trailer park charaters-I especially liked the knife loving Shears'-and equally clueless suburbirats.

Overall this movie is better than no movie, but almost any other would be better.

Obviously "Dead Pet" was produced with an ultra-low budget, but that never seems to get in the way. When Harvard student Jake Thompson returns home for the summer, his life begins to rapidly spiral out of control, beginning with his parents forgetting his birthday and to pick him up at the airport. From there things get worse as the family dog has gobbled up the remainder of his college money on a series of expensive operations. When the mutt turns up dead, Jake is accused of doing in the pooch. A series of hilarious headlines in the local paper chronicles Jake's downward plunge. Selling Matador quality cutlery to support himself, provides a great spoof of the in-home sales industry."Remember the phone is your lifeline". This little gem has a lot of heart, and a message not to let other people drag you down. Truly a winner. - MERK

Dead Pet is the kind of movie that a huge video store will have one copy of, if that. It was clearly made on a non-existent budget and, if we are to believe the director's (or is that producer's?) introduction, shot in less than two weeks. Depending on which way you swing, those reasons alone are justification enough for dismissing or embracing it. I embrace it.

There is nothing particularly special about the plot. It starts in the middle and ends in the middle, with little backstory and no clear visions of the future. But you've seen the film or read the synopsis, so the plot is in your hands already. The real meat of the film is in it's characters. Each character has his or her own specific traits, and most of the actors bring them to life wonderfully. Jake is short tempered, but non-threatening. Willy is a shameless suck-up with a superiority complex. Eric obviously couldn't cut it as a real professional, so he throws himself completely into a very menial job. The Dukester... well, the Dukester is the Dukester.

It seems reasonable to worry that such pigeonholed players would become tired towards the tail end of the movie, but someone thought ahead. The film is less than eighty minutes long. At first I felt a bit cheated, but on repeated viewings I have come to believe that this is the perfect length. A great deal of wit is crammed into the picture as it stands. Adding more footage would be stretching it a bit.

I really hate to compare this film to Clerks, as they are from two different worlds. What they do have in common, however, is that their appeal is entirely in the dialog. Nothing of importance happens through the course of the film, yet you stay interested because the characters are saying the things you've always wanted to say. It's roughly the same theory with Dead Pet.

Dead Pet is a hilarious independent comedy that ranks up there with Clerks on my top ten independant films.

Here's the deal: Jake (writer-director of the film Kevin Cotteleer) is a college kid who comes home to find his parents have spent his college on their poodle Miko. He moves out, and one of his friends accidentally kills Miko while trying to sorta make-out with his girlfriend. Much chaos ensues, featuring weird situations such as a fight in the lawn between two girls, a cutlery sales industry that is like a cult where Jake gets his job (providing for the funniest scenes in the film), his friends begin to doubt him, activists sit outside his yard thinking he killed the dog screaming "bring Jake to justice! justice for Miko!" and all sorts of other weird, very indie-film-esque situations with sharply written dialogue an well-done cinema antics.

Dead Pet is definetly worth checking out if you dig on funny, witty, quirky, weird, and sorta plotless films where characters deteriorate in a comedic way.

Not fantastic, but definitely entertaining. This film was hilarious. Some may be turned off by the indie quality of the film, acting, and sets, but overall it is a ridiculously bizarre situation that the main character is in and you can't help but laugh at it. I picked this film up on a whim while at the video store and was pleasantly surprised. If you like black comedies (Rushmore, Fargo) then I would totally check this out.