It’s hard to criticize a well-meaning labor of love like The Year of the Dog. Shot in rural Montana, the recovery drama is the brainchild of Rob Grabow, whose bio notes that he made a million dollars running a sports apparel business out of his dorm room. The low-budget production values of his film demonstrates that resourcefulness, but for the most part it just doesn’t work. If the human element, however heartfelt, is so much cliché, the triumph of the furry underdog finally makes it likable, and yet it can’t overcome the project’s flaws.
Grabow not only stars as the alcoholic Matt, but wrote the script and co-directed with Andrew McGinn and Michael Peterson. We meet Matt in the throes of addiction. His old buddy Fred (Michael Spears) tries to help him out, and it’s through Fred that Matt takes on the stray Husky they call Yup’ik. The trouble is, the script is weighed down with largely unrealistic dialogue; on the one hand, Fred, offended by Matt’s Atlanta Braves cap, expounds at length about racism in sports mascots. The scene is terribly forced, and given Grabow’s history in sports apparel, seems like a kind of self-justification. On the other hand, there are awkward moments when Matt tries to connect with Julie (Alyssa Groenig) with lines like “So your mom’s a musher?” If there isn’t enough on Matt’s plate with racism and alcoholism, his mother is suffering from cancer, and he has flashbacks of tender moments with his late father.
Again, one feels terrible criticizing such a loaded personal history, though Grabow explains in an interview that it’s not entirely his own story. “When I wrote the film, I was going through a pretty rough patch. Addiction and alcoholism weren’t my personal vices, but I know what it’s like to feel alone and to be in a lot of emotional pain…I was trying to explore the theme of connection and give some voice to difficult things from my own life. I think that’s what anyone — be it a writer, or an actor, or a comic — we’re all trying to give voice to parts of our own experiences.”
That voice is best expressed through the dog. Of course, Matt struggles to train Yup’ik, and when he enrolls the dog in a sled contest against stiff competition, you know how it will resolve in the end.
The only realistic human character here is Greg (Jon Proudstar). Even if Greg is a kind of Magical Native American, explaining to Matt the ancient relationship of dog and man, Proudstar invests him with sympathy and an avuncular gravitas — you’d listen to his advice too! When Greg teaches Matt how to get Yup’ik to obey commands (some of us on staff could use such dog whispering lessons), it’s predictable, sure, but when Yup’ik answers the call, it feels like a real moment.
Grabow sold his condo to finance the film, and one wants to root for it, as one wants to root for Matt. The heart of this character is solid: here’s somebody who’s used to disappointing people and himself, and he’s got a shot at achieving something, however minor, if he can just be disciplined and focused. On one level, this is a movie about a man training a dog, but of course, it’s also about a dog teaching a human. It’s basic stuff, corny but eventually, honest. A shot of Yup’ik licking Matt’s face, the camera pointed at the sun with generous lens flare, is corny as hell, but that’s what somebody drawn by the title The Year of the Dog is looking for. Strangely, a post-credit sequence featuring cast and crew around the dinner table shows more chemistry than in any of the film’s dramatic scenes. One imagines that, with more focus and discipline, the movie could succeed at, as its tag line says, “pulling through.”
Photo courtesy of Nova Vento Entertainment
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