Dawg Reviews

Dawg is by far the inferior of the two Denis Leary-Elizabeth Hurley vehicles that went straight to cable/video in 2001/2002. Tom DiCillo's Double Whammy, their other film, satirizes Tarantino-style filmmaking and captures some of the same sardonic wit as Leary's stand-up act. Dawg, on the other hand, is played far too broadly. It's a vulgar, ugly film with very few laughs. Leary has a strong screen presence and Hurley can be charming, so the viewer is lulled into giving the film a chance, despite an unpromising opening and a cheesy premise. It starts with a flashback to Dawg's (Leary) youth, a seduction scene involving produce, and a funeral at which Dawg unwittingly hits on his cousin. These scenes are all played with sledgehammer finesse and things just get worse from there. In the funeral scene, in which Dawg hangs out by the buffet table, his line "because women like to eat when they're sad" is actually a comedic highlight. Things get worse when Dawg hooks up with Anna (Hurley) and they begin looking up his old conquests. The map we're shown of their journey is completely meaningless because there's never a sense of how much time is passing or where these women are from. Not one of the women Dawg tracks down is a fully drawn character and, at best, they're good for a quick, easy joke. (One, for example, has a lot of cats.) The film reaches its absurd nadir when Dawg visits Erica (Jackie Tohn), who now calls herself "Eric," and is perhaps the most unconvincing sex change in the history of cinema. With Leary in the lead, the filmmakers had an opportunity to explore the predatory male psyche. They went for cheap laughs instead and, for the most part, failed to get them.