EasilyBemused

For those of you hesitant to rent this movie based on the box description, several points may change your mind. The dog in this movie doesn't talk, and isn't CGI. Whoopi Goldberg has relatively little screen time, perhaps about fifteen minutes total. The guy from 'Office Space' with the grudge against the copier, Ajay Naidu, plays a major role.

This is a dark comedy, more then a crime drama. A brief scene involving dog fighting is one of the lesser reasons why this is =not= a family film. Despite the violence, it actually contains less gore then crime dramas such as 'Bound', and it's implied rather then shown.

The characters appear at first to be clichéd roles – a retiring police officer, a foreign taxi driver, a hit man with a conscience, an apparently homosexual neighbor – but they end up not conforming to their Hollywood templates. The movie contains a refreshing mix of amusing situations, ironic humor, and slapstick comedy, and isn't dragged down by it's fifteen minutes of the 'warm fuzzies' type of comedy associated with Whoopi Goldberg's movies.

Several things drag this movie down from a 10 for me. It's lacking polish in places, and some of the shots could be framed better. It 'feels' low budget. The ending, in it's twisting, is a bit too choppy and needs a few more threads tying it into the rest of movie.

If you're a fan of Todd Solondz's movies, don't be mislead by the box on this movie - Definitely worth renting.

Definitely more in the chick-flick genre, this film's storyline drifts along like a late summer afternoon on a southern swamp. There's plenty of sunlight through trees, a clichéd convertible ride, and a liberated bird that was probably meant to be symbolic but didn't quite make it there.

If you're expecting an erotic film rather then one that involves a character with mother issues, you'll be disappointed.

There isn't anything painfully bad about this movie. The acting, especially Christina Applegate's, isn't over the top, and the supporting characters are at worse mediocre. There just isn't any real depth, or anything catching about it. Bits and pieces of imagery from it will linger in your memory exponentially longer then the plot will.

Debbie Reynold's chirpy acting was on par with the average children's movie. However, the acting of the younger actors, especially Kimberly Brown's, is horrendously wooden. Their seemingly nailed-on, unchanging smiles are more disturbing then any of the Halloweentown frights.

Early on, the movie assuredly alienates the audience they were targeting to relate with Marnie Cromwell. A 12-year old clasping a children's board book and gushing that it was about "Vampires, werewolves, and witches ... all of my favorite things" would have been amusing except that her delivery was so stilted that I was embarrassed for her.

Though the plot does make attempts at themes such as sibling jealousy, it also weaves in themes such as the shunned high school sweetheart that only clutter a movie for children.

Though not as bad as the dialog, the costuming is half-hearted, with some of the monsters wearing masks and 'monster' hands without even an attempt at makeup covering their bare necks.

An animated Pinocchio delivered his lines smoother and showed more emotion then the flesh and blood actors in this movie manage to.