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MAN'S BEST FRIEND (1993)
See a cat get swallowed whole! Am I the only one who remembers this movie having a tag line that said "He makes Cujo look like Benji"? Whether it existed or not, that tag line is fairly representative of what to expect from Man's Best Friend, which is both a bad killer-dog movie (its killer dog not really being a dog anyway), and a bad corporations-are-torturing-animals movie. It starts with reporter Ally Sheedy promising a lab tech $500 - not exactly risk-losing-your-job money - to sneak her in and let her film all the cats with holes in their backs, rabbits with their eyes burnt out, etc. No non-cute animals are to be seen; all that's missing is the baby seal with a club embedded in its head. The least agonized-looking animal she finds is Max, a sweet-seeming giant pooch who has all sorts of electronic monitoring shit on it, which she unplugs. It then follows her home, retrieves her purse from a mugger if you know what I mean, and causes some romantic friction between her and her boyfriend, who not unreasonably questions why she'd bring home and keep this huge dog that is overtly hostile to him. "Not unreasonable" are two words that describe the boyfriend who repeatedly appeals to his girlfriend to get rid of the dog (horrible fate) and, for most of the movie, the dog's creator, played by Lance Henriksen as if he's unaware that the movie is looking to make animal experimentation look needlessly cruel and universally evil. He dispassionately argues that the research he's doing is about saving human lives, but it should surprise no one that it's not about that after all, but about creating the Perfect Killing Machine, a genetically engineered mix of dogs and cheetahs and chameleons (!) and rattlesnakes (?!?!?) and whatever pees acid. One even hears the "bionic man" sound effect as it slow-mo jumps over a fence. The dog spends much of the rest of the movie performing lots of obnoxiously cute, crowd-pleasing antics, if we're talking about a crowd of 5-year-olds. Even when it's doing something awful, or improbably clever, or just impossible (its chameleon camouflage works on its collar too, apparently) it's presented as a loveable antic. We get it - we're supposed to love Max, even though without regular tranquilizer shots he goes into uncontrollable murder mode. Max is a victim, not the problem, even when it would totally have killed those kids if the screenplay had allowed it to catch up to them. Let's not kid ourselves, Max isn't even a dog, it just looks like a dog. It's a vicious monster, complete with malevolent superpowers, that attacks with minimal provocation but occasionally elicits sympathy by putting on its most loveable sad-dog face - always an easy access to the sympathies of the gullible. But, like any domestic animal, it's exactly what man made it to be - it's silly to try to connect with the gentle nature of an animal man designed to be vicious. Watch for William Sanderson as a potential adopter for Max who's so perfect, you just know he's gonna do what they call a "heel turn". Man's Best Friend is laboriously, transparently manipulative, even going so far as to have Sheedy spend the entire climax protecting a fucking puppy. When Max, in full-on rage death murder chomp mode, corners Sheedy at the end, does she save herself by appealing to its gentle nature ('cuz it's a dog, right? They're all loving and gentle, right?)? Do you have to ask? (c) Brian J. Wright 2007 BACK TO THE M's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |