Dog Days is a unique romantic comedy that misses the mark and seems a bit more about several crapy love stories that use dogs to bind it together than about the dogs themselves. However, the key to most people’s heart are dogs and this movie does an ok job at drawing you in with said dogs. They were quite cute but overall did more to fill in the gaps that a decent story would have flushed out.
Dog Days is a unique romantic comedy that misses the mark and seems a bit more about several crapy love stories that use dogs to bind it together than about the dogs themselves. However, the key to most people’s heart are dogs and this movie does an ok job at drawing you in with said dogs. They were quite cute but overall did more to fill in the gaps that a decent story would have flushed out.
I want to start with the overall plot of the movie. If you look at the cover of the DVD, you will notice that it has two dogs and two people. Giving the impression that this story will be about two people falling in love and their journey to that point with their dogs, of course. However, that plot that I mentioned above is only one of four ongoing stories throughout the movie. There is a story about a coffee shop worker (Vanesa Hudgens) who rescues a dog and then falls for the dog shelter director. A story about a man whose life is a mess and can be counted on to show up to his own funeral who learns responsibility from his sisters’ dog. Finally, there is a family who adopted a child and is not sure how to make the kid welcomed until they find a dog. Running parallel to that plot is a story about a man whose wife died and dog runs away, and the pizza boy becomes his friend and teaches him how not to be bitter.
It was interesting that all of these stories have dogs in them and you would expect that from a dog movie, but somehow the film does a poor job of actually making the dogs feel important. It seems like the dogs were just thrown in there as the glue of a pieced together story. I also think that it would have been better to stick with one love story or even the paralleled plot of the family and old man as opposed to switching around. This leaves the story feeling short and unfinished especially when they fast forward a year but only include two of the character plots. Nothing is really explained or even inferred but a year has passed, and they are still together.
The acting was on par for what you would expect for this type of movie. Vanessa Hudgens and Nina Dobrev were on the screen most and did a good job of portraying their characters as intended. As well as Adam Pally who plays an excellent slob character portrayal. I did expect Eva Longoria to be more of a standout role, but the character she played didn’t have much overall screen time which led to a lack of impact. As far as the dog, they were great. All of them had more manner and better behavior than some humans. If only my dog at home could behave half a good as acting dogs than I would be a happy man.
I’m not saying that this movie was awful. Even though I have some complaints about it, I did enjoy it. It made me laugh, it made me happy, and it made me have some good emotions. It’s not a tear jerker by any means, but it’s a good film for what its worth. I would say overall that this was a very average movie that deserves a watch at least once if you have nothing else to do. Sometimes you find a hidden gem, and sometimes you don’t.
