
Shy, chain-smoking, insomniac Peter McGowen is a Los Angeles playwright with a string of hits that preceded his current ten years of failed productions. His mother-in-law is sinking into senility. A stranger is meandering the neighborhood claiming to be him. Neighbors have a new dog that barks all night. His wife wants to have a child, and he does not. He's become impotent. He's working on a new play when a single mother moves in next door with her eight-year-old daughter. Hi... (Full plot summary below)
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Shy, chain-smoking, insomniac Peter McGowen is a Los Angeles playwright with a string of hits that preceded his current ten years of failed productions. His mother-in-law is sinking into senility. A stranger is meandering the neighborhood claiming to be him. Neighbors have a new dog that barks all night. His wife wants to have a child, and he does not. He's become impotent. He's working on a new play when a single mother moves in next door with her eight-year-old daughter. His wife immediately invites the girl into the McGowen household. Will this child stir Peter's paternal feelings? Will she also help him get his dialogue right? And what of his doppelganger and the neighbor's dog?
Leave your thoughts about How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog.
| Film ScoutsJason GorberThis is an agreeable but hardly challenging film, a movie perfect for a night by the fire when you want to curl up and relax. |
| Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanBranagh shows us the comedy of a man who is too clever to understand that in the guise of dreading fatherhood, he is really at war with how much he longs for it. |
| Combustible CelluloidJeffrey M. AndersonKalesniko manages to keep all this stuff entertainingly cynical and doesn't let the ever-present sentimental goop overcome his story. |
| EmanuelLevy.ComEmanuel LevyA minor film that's no more than a trifle with some comic touches |
| Apollo GuideJanet BranaganA succinct effort to explore how our relationships force us to re-evaluate what we want out of life at the most inopportune and unexpected of times. |
| New TimesAndy KleinFact is, there is nothing feloniously awful about the whole thing, but the laughs are tepid and too infrequent. |
| TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThis slight slice of L.A. life is distinguished by two fine, subtle performances. Redgrave is quietly heartbreaking-- Penn accomplishes the daunting task of revealing the spine beneath Melanie's sweet-natured tolerance of her perpetually disagreeable husband. |
| The New York TimesStephen HoldenReminds us that when it comes to comedy, it's all in the writing. Mr. Kalesniko's satirically barbed screenplay, whose spirit harks back to the comic heyday of Blake Edwards, stirs up an insistent verbal energy that rarely flags. |
| New York Daily NewsJack MathewsThat's a lot just to justify a cute title, but cuteness is the engine driving the slight, obvious but occasionally very funny film. |
| Flick FilosopherMaryAnn JohansonMordantly funny and intimately knowing ... |