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. 

Blind Spot Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

I’m back! I missed last month’s Blind Spot due to a wedding-related meltdown, but then the beauty of sharing this blog means that Jenna reviewed Terminator 2 still. I did watch about half an hour of it, but certainly not enough to comment! We’re back as a pair this month to review a movie we both loved, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).  I had this downloaded on my iPad and spent an evening watching it while on holiday abroad, I should have been out partying but I got so into it, I had to stay in and finish it!

Despite it being one of my choices for the year, I actually had no idea what it was about, I’d just heard the title so many times, it sort of stuck with me. In fact I was on the verge of dragging my heels about watching it, until Jenna told me what it was all about and I literally watched it the very next day. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) pleads insanity after getting into trouble with the law to avoid prison, and is sent to a ward for the mentally unstable. Whilst there, McMurphy meets a variety of patients, each with their own stories, and rallies them together to stand up and rebel against Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).

I think the reason I loved this movie so much was the characters. There are so many of them, and yet the movie explores each one perfectly. We find out what their story is, what their quirks are, we witness their highs and their lows, and we just can’t help but root for them. Chief (Will Sampson) in particular was one of my favourites, I thought the basketball scene was brilliant.  There wasn't a single character I didn't love (Nurse Ratched excluded) even the scary guy from Ghost was loveable.  Mostly though it was all bout McMurphy, what a character, he couldn't have been played better by anyone, Jack Nicholson was so perfect. Nurse Ratched was eerily creepy all the way through and bloody terrifying at the end.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is such a feel-good movie. It’s also hilarious for all the right reasons. I think when mental illnesses are portrayed in movies, it’s too easy to fall into the ‘depressing’ category or ‘mocking’ in its humour, and this isn’t like that at all. My favourite scene is early on when the gang are playing cards and betting with cigarettes, and Martini (Danny DeVito) tries breaking cigarettes in half to ‘bet a dime’. It doesn’t sound funny in written words, but I was crying whilst watching it!  I laughed out loud countless times and I found myself smiling all the way through, up until the end of course.  The same as Allie the basketball scene was the one of the bestscenes but for me it was all about the ending with McMurphy and Chief, my heart absolutely broke and it stuck with me for days afterwards.

It’s so easy to see Nurse Ratched as a simple villain, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her at the same time. I mean, she was looking after that peaceful ward for goodness knows how long, and literally the moment McMurphy shows up, it all goes to hell. I actually felt a bit sorry for her until the last 20 minutes or so, when she showed her true colours. Ugh, just thinking about the ending leaves me feeling cold.

With a runtime of over 2 hours, this was just a bit too long for my poor attention span, but it felt too short at the same time. Poor movie, right? Just can’t win with me! What I think I mean though is that I’d love for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to be a TV Show, similar to Orange is the New Black, just to spend more time with each of those characters. That would be awesome, right?! I would only want a TV show if it was the same actors, if they tried to reboot it I would just be pissed!!  This felt to me like the shortest movie in the world, I just wanted it to go on and on and learn more about the characters and what happened to them after the movie ended.

I’m so glad I watched this. I’ll happily see it again.  Loved loved loved, it have already watched it again and it will have a permanent place on my re-watch list!!