Film Reviews

Sleeping Dogs

• Rating:
• Director: Bob Goldthwait
• Starring: Bryce Johnson
• Details: US 87mins (18).

Sitting alone in her apartment one night, student Amy (Hamilton) decides to try something totally different to alleviate the boredom - she performs oral sex on her dog. Years later, this act comes back to haunt her when her fiance John (Johnson) teases out her dark secret when the couple visit her parents. The confession is overheard by her drug addict brother Dougie (Plotnick), who threatens to tell her family the whole sordid mess. Meet The Parents-meets-K-9 is the only way to describe Sleeping Dogs and although it sounds hilarious and gross and all that, the end result is not as funny as writerdirector Bob Goldthwait (Police Academy's Officer Zed) thinks it is. Approaching it like a one-joke student short stretched to feature length, Goldthwait's film unfortunately feels like just that. In the hands of a really gifted filmmaker, shifting from gross out comedy to serious drama wouldn't be a problem; but Goldthwait's end product lacks cinematic vision, while his sitcom-influenced set-ups don't help. Despite the interesting premise, there isn't a hell of a lot going on here, and the film loses its way pretty quickly. The performances are fine and do what they have to do, but the sometimes-clumsy dialogue, which could have done with a little finessing, lets them down.

Review by Gavin Burke