Lawn Dogs

Sam Rockwell is one of those actors who, no matter what role he's playing, is totally natural. He's immediately likable. I've always been a big fan of his, and up until yesterday had never before seen Lawn Dogs, one of the earliest films wherein he has a bigger role. He's very quietly, calmly good in it, and even in the scenes where he's playing and goofing around with Mischa Barton and it seems awkward, he maintains a pure, natural presence.

Lawn Dogs says something important about the most generic slice of American life, the geometrically shaped and calculated life in the suburbs. The film doesn't unmask it. Cleverly, it maintains that quiet, perpetually sunny, middle-of-nowhere feeling of a classic subdivision, and then displays a sad and maddening scenario of misunderstanding in a closed-minded, insular neighborhood and the hauntingly realistic characters. There is a bit of animal violence in this movie, but it's played out in a tautly spare way that's just as frustrating as vain, judgmental people and matter of the rest of the film.

Lawn Dogs is a refreshing sort of film. The relationship between Rockwell and Barton is heartwarming and broadly, gently natural. It's good to experience a story that altruistically communicates the genuine existence and state of mind that is often questioned and often misunderstood.

Sam Rockwell has been had. He lit up the screen in "Box of Moonlight," is a major player in the upcoming "Midsummer Night's Dream," and yet he didn't get equal billing for screen time in either of those films. What gives? In "Lawn Dogs" Rockwell is stunning as the lawn boy who accepts a little "rich" girl as a friend and gives her a new view of the world. The movie is rich in atmosphere and color. The central Southern United States has rarely appeared so docile and yet so menacing. Every time I thought I knew where "Lawn Dogs" was going...it pulled another pleasant surprise. Mischa Barton is amazing as Devon Stockard, the little girl with more on her mind than selling cookies. This is truly one of the best American films of the 90's. If you like off-beat slices of America with a twisted view, then "Lawn Dogs" is the best movie you'll see in a long time. It is quite simply full of the magic, menace and imagination alive in the heads and hearts of little girls...about to become young women. Oh yeah, and give Sam Rockwell his due!

Mischa Barton really blew me away in this film. I usually don't care much for child actors, and I went into this film thinking that way. But Barton seemed, with few exceptions, to BE her character. But there's a lot more than just pretty good acting from a precocious child. Barton was a major league charmer. You just couldn't take your eyes off her whenever she was on-screen. Sam Rockwell was decent, and no one else really showed much except maybe Angie Harmon in a small part. (She did have a rare topless scene in this film) But most of the characters do weird things, with no tie-in at all to any reason for their conduct. I think this may be thought by some to be character development, but I think it is either laziness or insufficiently imaginative screenwriters. But in any case you should check out this film just to see Barton. Grade: B

This is the kind of movie that independent film fans search for and hope to find. It's well-written, acted and directed with a story that's off the beaten path a bit, to be sure. It concerns the odd relationship between two people who don't exactly fit in the world an upscale suburban housing community. One is a 10 -year old girl named Devon (Mischa Barton) whose parents want her to be the perfect little daughter. She'd rather live in her own world, one in which she entertains herself with her favorite fairy tale of the child-menacing witch, Baba Yaga. The other is a twentysomething yard worker named Trent (Sam Rockwell), who is treated in this paranoid community almost like a black South African under apartheid, i.e. get in, do you work and get out.

Both of them display their non-conformist behavior early on. She climbs out her bedroom window to her roof, takes off her nightgown and watches it magically float away into the night sky. He stops on his way home from work on a one-lane bridge, blocking the traffic, and proceeds to disrobe and take a leap into the river below. Devon gets interested in him, especially after she witnesses his blatant and subtle humiliation at a neighborhood cookout, where he's come to get paid for some work. She more or less stalks him at his mobile home, even spying on him making love to one of the community's young women, a girl who will barely acknowledge him otherwise. Trent tries to shoo Devon away at first, but he can't help but be flattered by the young girl's interest.

Of course the potential for misunderstanding in this kind of relationship is great and it inevitably happens. I feared that the movie was about to fly apart after Devon's father and some others confronted Trent, but the fantastic ending (fantastic in the sense of fantasy) made me smile. If you are looking for something different, this movie definitely qualifies.

LAWN DOGS

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Digital

The haves and have-nots are put under the microscope in John Duigan's diverting drama LAWN DOGS, and it's the haves who come up wanting in every respect. Sam Rockwell (CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND) is the penniless gardener-cum-handyman who makes a fragile living tending the lawns of contemptuous rich folk, all of whom view him with deep suspicion whilst indulging their own dubious peccadilloes behind closed doors. Mischa Barton (THE SIXTH SENSE, TV's "The O.C.") is a lonely 10 year old girl who's been shielded from the world by her wealthy parents following a recent health scare (she has a faulty heart), but she dares to strike up a friendship with Rockwell after stumbling onto his ramshackle home in the woods, a friendship which she pursues against Rockwell's wishes, until their 'secret' is forced into the open and grossly misinterpreted by Barton's vengeful family.

While the moneyed set lives in antiseptic splendour and conceals its hypocrisy behind security measures of every description, Rockwell's character enjoys an open life in a beautiful forest environment, like the witch Baba Yaga in Barton's favourite fairy tale. In fact, there's a magical, otherworldly quality to much of the film (rendered explicit in the final reel), though the central narrative is fairly low-key and revolves around Rockwell's frequent encounters with the dissolute low-lifes who dare to think themselves superior. With his wiry frame and white trash southern accent, Rockwell strikes something of a romantic figure (watch out for his full-frontal nude scene early in the film), though he never stoops to eccentricity or excess. For one so young, Barton is excellent in such a demanding role, and she holds her own against an experienced adult cast (including Christopher McDonald and Kathleen Quinlan as Barton's narrow-minded parents, and Eric Mabius as the rich jock who can barely conceal his attraction to Rockwell). Beautiful cinematography by Elliot Davis (KING OF THE HILL).