"Lawn Dogs" is a most un-Hollywood-like American movie but that's not surprising; the director John Duigan is a British-born Australian ("The Year My Voice Broke", "Flirting") and the production companies seem to have been largely British. The satire is biting and the fairy tale elements are not sugar-coated. Ten year old Devon (Mischa Barton) has recently moved in with her parents to "Camelot Gardens", one of those new country housing developments favoured by rising executives with mercenary values and no taste, let alone any culture. This one happens to be outside Louisville, Kentucky, but similar places are to be found outside cities all over the US. These are the houses of the undeserving rich. Huge, barn-like houses are plonked in the middle of their treeless lots and surrounded by vast swaths of ever-growing luxuriant grass. After all, this is Bluegrass country.
The lawn dogs are the working class boys who are continuously employed to keep the grass down. They do not enjoy high status and must leave the premises after 5 pm. Devon, a highly imaginative kid who makes up fairy stories, becomes friendly with one of the dogs, Trent (Sam Rockwell), who is in his early 20s. She meets him when sent out by her mother to sell gingerbread for the Girl Scouts (called Rangers in the film). Trent at first tries to put her off, knowing full well what people might think, but Devon persists, and a warm but innocent relationship develops. Trent is a not over-bright but slightly rebellious dog and correctly sees in Devon a spirit like his own. Early in the film he holds up the traffic in an entertaining way while cooling off in the river after a hard day's mowing.
The residents of "Camelot Gardens" are all cardboard cut-out awful, Devon's parents especially. Life is so stultifying that most of them seem to be involved in illicit sex. A bored kid steals all the outside lamps and hurls them into the nearby Ohio river. Two teenagers (one of whom has been screwing Devon's mother and the other of whom has designs on Trent's body) put sugar into Trent's mower engine, destroying his livelihood in the mistaken belief he has taken a couple of their CDs. One girl is quite happy to use Trent as a convenient screw but draws the line at inviting him to her house. The postmen and security guy (an ex-cop) aren't so bad, at least from Trent's point of view. They recognise another working class stiff when they see one.
Naturally Trent and Devon are not going to be left alone, but Duigan gives us what is literally a fairy-tale ending, a bit of Kentucky magic realism to match "Bread and Chocolate". The real world is told to sod off, in fact.
I'm not sure the residents of Jefferson and Oldham Counties, who co-operated in the making of the film, will be too pleased with the portrayal of the "Camelot Gardens" residents. But the film isn't really about them. The relationship between Trent and Devon is more older brother - kid sister than anything else though there is an undercurrent of eroticism in Devon's curiosity about Trent's scars and her desire to reveal her own impressive scar from heart surgery. Their joint escapades are pretty innocent and the town's reaction to them completely out of all proportion.
Mischa Devon and Sam Rockwell give two well-rounded and well-connected performances. "Lawn Dogs" an offbeat, pleasantly paced film about friendship and the things that matter in life. Freedom, it says, is more important than financial security, and the one should never be confused with the other. At least if you're 22 or younger.
The lawn dogs are the working class boys who are continuously employed to keep the grass down. They do not enjoy high status and must leave the premises after 5 pm. Devon, a highly imaginative kid who makes up fairy stories, becomes friendly with one of the dogs, Trent (Sam Rockwell), who is in his early 20s. She meets him when sent out by her mother to sell gingerbread for the Girl Scouts (called Rangers in the film). Trent at first tries to put her off, knowing full well what people might think, but Devon persists, and a warm but innocent relationship develops. Trent is a not over-bright but slightly rebellious dog and correctly sees in Devon a spirit like his own. Early in the film he holds up the traffic in an entertaining way while cooling off in the river after a hard day's mowing.
The residents of "Camelot Gardens" are all cardboard cut-out awful, Devon's parents especially. Life is so stultifying that most of them seem to be involved in illicit sex. A bored kid steals all the outside lamps and hurls them into the nearby Ohio river. Two teenagers (one of whom has been screwing Devon's mother and the other of whom has designs on Trent's body) put sugar into Trent's mower engine, destroying his livelihood in the mistaken belief he has taken a couple of their CDs. One girl is quite happy to use Trent as a convenient screw but draws the line at inviting him to her house. The postmen and security guy (an ex-cop) aren't so bad, at least from Trent's point of view. They recognise another working class stiff when they see one.
Naturally Trent and Devon are not going to be left alone, but Duigan gives us what is literally a fairy-tale ending, a bit of Kentucky magic realism to match "Bread and Chocolate". The real world is told to sod off, in fact.
I'm not sure the residents of Jefferson and Oldham Counties, who co-operated in the making of the film, will be too pleased with the portrayal of the "Camelot Gardens" residents. But the film isn't really about them. The relationship between Trent and Devon is more older brother - kid sister than anything else though there is an undercurrent of eroticism in Devon's curiosity about Trent's scars and her desire to reveal her own impressive scar from heart surgery. Their joint escapades are pretty innocent and the town's reaction to them completely out of all proportion.
Mischa Devon and Sam Rockwell give two well-rounded and well-connected performances. "Lawn Dogs" an offbeat, pleasantly paced film about friendship and the things that matter in life. Freedom, it says, is more important than financial security, and the one should never be confused with the other. At least if you're 22 or younger.