Fresh
Has an unusually high ratio of laughs per minute.
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
2002 · 1h 47m · R
Comedy, Drama
Directed by
Michael Kalesniko
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How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
Overview
The story of Peter McGowan, a chain-smoking, impotent, insomniac playwright who lives in Los Angeles. Once very successful, he is now in the tenth year of a decade-long string of production failures. He finds himself bonding with a new neighbor's lonely young daughter who has mild cerebral palsy; and during one of his middle-of-the-night strolls, he encounters his oddball doppelgänger.
Director and cast
- Michael Kalesniko Director
- Kenneth Branagh as Peter McGowan
- Robin Wright as Melanie McGowan
- Suzi Hofrichter as Amy Walsh
- Lynn Redgrave as Edna
- Jared Harris as False Peter
- Peter Riegert as Larry
- David Krumholtz as Brian Sellars
- Johnathon Schaech as Adam
- Kaitlin Hopkins as Victoria
- Suzy Joachim as Allana
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
58%
Tomatometer
Rotten
Falsehoods pile up, undermining the movie's reality and stifling its creator's comic voice.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
Rotten
Kenneth Branagh's energetic sweet-and-sour performance as a curmudgeonly British playwright grounds this overstuffed, erratic dramedy in which he and his improbably forbearing wife contend with craziness and child-rearing in Los Angeles.
Gene Seymour, Newsday
Rotten
... comes alive only when it switches gears to the sentimental.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Fresh
Audiences conditioned to getting weepy over saucer-eyed, downy-cheeked moppets and their empathetic caretakers will probably feel emotionally cheated by the film's tart, sugar-free wit.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
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