Review: Wiener-Dog (2016)

Let me tell you about 2 of my favourite things. Number 1: Dogs. All dogs, to be perfectly honest. I’m the type of person who, whilst walking in the woods will say hello to every dog I meet, and completely ignore the human being on the other side of the lead. Dachshund’s in particular are extremely cute. Number 2: Those movies about multiple stories where they all end up linking together in some way. Okay, what I actually mean is that I love Love Actually, but you get the picture. So when I find out about a movie called Wiener-Dog, a movie about a little dachshund who changes the lives of a whole bunch of people, I’m hyped.

How then, can a movie let me down so badly?! Here, let me find you this movie’s description, straight from IMDB: A dachshund passes from oddball owner to oddball owner, whose radically dysfunctional lives are all impacted by the pooch.

Hmm, not quite. Let me give it a go: The unluckiest dachshund in the world gets passed on from one bad owner to the next, people who don’t deserve the bundle of happiness that is Wiener-Dog.

Perhaps I’m being harsh. Let me recap on the ‘oddball owners’ that Wiener-Dog gets passed on to.

Oddball Owners #1: A father picks up Wiener-Dog from the local shelter as a gift for his cancer-suffering child. Proceeds to keep her locked in a cage until ‘her will has been broken’. Parents leave said child alone in the house whilst they attend a yoga class, and the kid feeds the hungry little dog far too many granola bars, causing mass diarrhea. Father takes Wiener-Dog to the vets to be put down.

At this point the viewers are treated to a beautiful tracking shot of diarrhea in the street. It goes on for ages, and it’s accompanied by some lovely music, too. 

Oddball Owners #2: The vet’s assistant (Greta Gerwig) takes pity on Wiener-Dog, and steals her away. She names her doodie. As in, well, poo. Great. She then decides to take a road trip with an old school friend who is possibly the world’s biggest douchebag, and leaves Wiener-Dog with her friend’s disabled family.

I’m not sure what happens at this point, because we head straight on to…

Oddball Owners #4: A struggling scriptwriter (Danny DeVito) now owns Wiener-Dog, but instead of giving her a loving home, he has a crazy turn and straps a bomb to her. I’m not even kidding. The bomb squad have to disarm her before she goes boom.

Oddball Owners #?: Wiener-Dog now lives with an old, blind lady, who has named her Cancer. Wonderful. Old lady’s horrible granddaughter comes to visit with her new boyfriend Fantasy (arghhh!) and asks for $10,000 to help him with his artistic dream. She relents, and terrible granddaughter leaves. What happens next is some bizarre epiphany involving multiple versions of old lady’s younger self.

I won’t spoil the ending for you. Even though this post should ensure that you’ll never want to see this movie, I won’t do that to you. It will go down in history as one of the biggest ‘WTF’ endings. 

From what I can gather, Wiener-Dog got a lot of good reviews. Perhaps the story is just too spiritual or artsy for me, but all it did was turn me into a giant ball of rage. At least I wasn’t bored at any point. 

Wayward Pines Seasons 1 & 2 (Spoiler Free)

Living with someone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. Sure, the bills are halved, there’s someone to help tidy up the mess (isn’t there just twice the amount of mess though?) but you know what sucks? Having to watch your favourite TV Shows at the same pace as them. (I’m kidding, love you - by the way it’s your turn to wash up). It’s taken my husband and I months to work through a few small comedy shows, and we haven’t seen any dramas since Dexter. Anything I suggested I could watch alone was suddenly something he was interested in too, so I needed something fairly short and gripping, so we could watch it at a good pace. I needed my TV fix!

We’d burnt through Parks & Rec, The IT Crowd and 30 Rock, and we aren’t horror fans, so it was going to have to be a gripping drama for us. After a few recommendations, Wayward Pines sounded like the winner, so a couple of weeks ago we gave the first episode a try. Let me tell you now, this is a mysterious show indeed, and so I promise I’m going to keep in spoiler free, in case you’re interested in giving this show a go.

There are just 2 seasons out so far, and we managed to burn through them in 3 weeks. That’s pretty good going for us, I promise! There’s 10 episodes per season, and they’re your usual 45 minutes without adverts kind of length. I’m told in the opening credits that the show is based on a trilogy of novels by Blake Crouch. I’m so tempted to read these but I love the mystery of the show! I’m curious to see if they follow the same sort of format as the show. Does anyone know if each season is based on each book? I’m too scared to google anything…

You see, each of the two seasons has a completely different feel to it. Season 1 is a mystery for sure. The main character, Ethan (Matt Dillon) is an FBI Agent who wakes up in the town of Wayward Pines on a mission to find two missing agents. He soon realises there is something completely off about this town. Everyone is acting strange, and he seemingly can’t escape. I spent half an hour after each episode explaining my new theory on just what on earth Wayward Pines even is! 

Season 2 introduces a new host of characters, and at this point we as the audience know the truth about the town. Newcomer Doctor Yedlin (Jason Patric) quickly rises in power to become one of the most important members of the town, as a threat rapidly becomes more and more urgent with each episode. This season is much more thriller, and as much as I missed some of the mystery, there are still plenty of twists that had me quite literally gasping aloud.

On Twitter I think I summed it up pretty easily. Season 1 is ‘what the ****?’ and Season 2 is ‘they’re all ****ed’.

It’s not one of those shows you should research to see if you’d like it. Don’t even look it up on IMDB because you’ll see the cast list, and that tells you straight off how many episodes each character is in. Just take my advice. If you’re the slightest bit curious about Wayward Pines, give the first episode a try. If you’re not hooked after the first episode’s ending, this perhaps isn’t the show for you.

Oh, and screw this carousel, man. Wayward Pines isn't even a horror show but this carousel gives me the creeps and should probably get second billing in most episodes.

Have any of you seen the show? Or read the book? I’d really love to know your thoughts.