A Boy and His Dog

This was fairly funny and well written, in a writerly sense, but what was supposed to be the emotional turn at the end didn't land for me because of the scripts, the movies, woman problem.

So World War III just happened and the world's population and society as a whole were decimated, not to mention the fact that there aren't many women around to have sex with. And that's were Don Johnson comes in, or doesn't come in. With the help of his trusty dog, who he plies with food, he goes around looking for a woman to bang. He eventually finds one...and that leads to some unexpected consequences.

Don Johnson is good in his seedy main role, and the dog steals the show. It has some novel scenes and fresh interplay between the Don and the Dog. Overall, the movie is witty and has some fun moments...but that's where the good words end...

You can't have your lead character treat woman as only sex objects and then ask me to believe that he had any sort of relationship with the main female character. I didn't buy for a second that the girl had any emotional investment in him, nor did I believe that he ever saw her as anything more than a pin cushion, as nothing he did spoke to the contrary. So the notion that his relationship with his dog in any way grew thanks to the "relationship" with the woman was asinine.

That brings me to what this movie was really about. An exercise in woman hating...and ultimately, that they're beneath dogs (and if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean).

Other than that, there wasn't much else doing in this movie. It had a very small cast and very thin plot. The theme, as it were, sucked. It didn't work and along with the treatment of women sucked, there goes that word again, most of the enjoyment out of what was otherwise a decent little character driven post apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

I've nothing against cruel and mean spirited movies, even if they aren't witty like this film is, as long as they have something to say. This film has nothing worthwhile to say, nothing defensible to argue for. It's just misogynist lit porn brought to film.

Like many artifacts of the 60s & 70s, y'hadda be there...at least in order to feel a protective fondness for what is without question a very flawed movie. The miracle of this film was that it was made AT ALL. (Due in no small part to the tenor of the times it sprang from. The shackles on pop culture and genre fiction were loosening, allowing for more serious themes and treatment; of course, two years later STAR WARS would tighten the shackles again.) I'm a little amazed at the many posters bitching about cheap sets, poor fx, etc. Does everyone watch a movie EXPECTING a 50-million-dollar budget and CGI up the wazoo? If so, we're in deeper trouble than I thought. I look at A BOY AND HIS DOG with great affection as a sincere attempt to do something different, provocative and heartfelt, and although it's informed by a naive leftist worldview I don't share, there's a great deal of audacious creativity at work here that transcends many of the budgetary limitations. You'd think oddities like this would be treasured as artifacts of a more open and experimental period in movie history, rather than derided for falling short of INDEPENDENCE DAY's store-bought bombast and opticals. Go figure...

Here's a ridiculous movie that never aspires, so it wallows in self-pity.

The best way to describe this is an unimaginative version of 'Mad Max' and '1984'. Sadly, this doesn't break any new ground for our imagination. The only novel element is the talking dog which, by now, isn't amazing aside from his 'Lethal Weapon'-esque conversations with Don Johnson.

Final Analysis = = Cinematic Dud

A lot of fans of 1970s SF movies love 'A Boy And His Dog'. I don't. But I don't hate it either. I have read many stories by Harlan Ellison, but not the novella which inspired this (though I have read the prequel 'Eggsucker') so I can't say whether the fault is in the source material or L.Q. Jones' adaptation. Jones, an excellent character actor probably best known for his work with Sam Peckinpah, previously scripted the underrated horror movie 'The Brotherhood Of Satan', and also directed this time around. There's nothing really bad about his work here, but it ultimately fails to satisfy, and one can't help but feel it would have made a better short than a full length movie. Future 80s TV heartthrob Don Johnson is actually pretty good as "the boy" Vic, and Tim McIntire is even better as the voice of Blood. The cast also includes the late Jason Robards ('Magnolia') who had acted alongside Jones in a couple of Peckinpah movies, and Alvy Moore ('Green Acres'), an old friend of Jones' who was also in 'Brotherhood Of Satan'. Many people regard this in some ways as an inspiration for 'Mad Max'. George Miller claims he wasn't aware of 'A Boy And His Dog' until after he made the first movie in the series, and I can't see any reason to doubt him. The post-apocalyptic background was already a regular theme in SF stories even if it wasn't all that common in SF movies, and let's face it the movies have a lot more differences than similarities, but it's worth mentioning just the same. There were several SF movies made in the 1970s that deserve more attention. 'A Boy And His Dog' is one of them, but it still doesn't alter the fact that it is far from a great movie, and not without some dull patches. Even so, it is still worth watching, especially if you want to see what the decade had to offer other than 'Star Wars'.

In the year 2024 Earth has become a barren desert due to WW4. Vic is a solo, a loner who walks around in search of food and sex. He is accompanied by his telepathic dog, Blood, who uses his senses to sniff out women and food. When Blood sniffs out Susanne it leads to a terrifying journey to the underground where Vic finds himself trapped for sinister means.

This is a very basic that sticks to post-apocalypse movie rules - desert conditions, everyone searching for basic needs, loner warrior etc. The story seems to be leading nowhere but then picks up on the story of Susanne and begins treading towards the underground scenes. The main driver of the first half of the film is the relationship between Vic and Blood. Once the film moves underground, Blood is left behind and the film stutters a bit because of him being out of it. However once the story picks up again, Johnson can almost carry it. And the ending - it's not a shock or a twist but it's a quite whimsical end in a story that is about friendship.

Johnson is not too bad here, he's slagged off on these pages, but considering he's acting to a dog he does really well. It's almost like acting in a blue screen I suppose, having to respond to lines that aren't being spoken. He shows the extent of his talents when he goes underground but he's good on the surface. Composer Tim McIntire is good as Blood, but maybe makes him a little too unlikeable early on. The only other performance of interest is Jason Robards as the head of the underground committee.

Overall this is a little oddity, but it's not a brilliant film. The underground scenes are good in that they display greater imagination than those on the surface. It lacks pace for the most and really doesn't have anything to say but it's an interesting film.

More than anything else, I think this is one of those films that movie-snobs talk about in pubs because they know few people will have seen it! Forget them - it's worth seeing once.