''How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog'' is a 2000 American

black comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...

film written and directed by Michael Kalesniko. It stars

Kenneth Branagh Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh ( ; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. List of award ...

and

Robin Wright Penn Robin Gayle Wright (born April 8, 1966) is an American actress, film producer, producer and film director, director. List of awards and nominations received by Robin WShe has received accolades including a Golden Globe Award, and nominations ...

Plot

Peter McGowan is a chain-smoking,

impotent Erectile dysfunction (ED), also referred to as impotence, is a form of sexual dysfunction in males characterized by the persistent or recurring inability to achieve or maintain a penile erection with sufficient rigidity and duration for sati ...

insomnia Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder where people have difficulty sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep for as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low ene ...

c British

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...

who lives in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. Once very successful, he is now in the tenth year of a decade-long string of production failures. His latest play is in the hands of effeminate director Brian Sellars, who is obsessed with

Petula Clark Sally "Petula" Clark (born 15 November 1932) is a British singer, actress, and songwriter. She started her professional career as a child actor, child performer and has had the longest career of any British entertainer, spanning more than 85 y ...

; his wife Melanie is determined to have a baby; he finds himself bonding with a new neighbor's lonely young daughter who has mild

cerebral palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, spasticity, stiff muscles, Paresis, weak muscles, and tremors. There may b ...

; and during one of his middle-of-the-night strolls, he encounters his oddball

doppelgänger A doppelgänger ( ), sometimes spelled doppelgaenger or doppelganger, is a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its own fleshly counterpart. In fiction and mythology, a doppelgänger is often portrayed as a ghostly or p ...

who claims to be Peter McGowan and develops a friendship of sorts with him.

Cast

Production

's recordings of " I Couldn't Live Without Your Love" and "

A Groovy Kind of Love "A Groovy Kind of Love" is a song written by Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager based on a melody by the classical composer Muzio Clementi. The original rendition was recorded by American singing duo Diane & Annita and released as "Groovey Kind of ...

" were heard during the opening and

closing credits Closing credits, aka end credits or end titles, are a list of the cast and crew of a particular motion picture, television show, or video game. While opening credits appear at the beginning of a work, closing credits appear close to or at th ...

respectively, and "Downtown 99", a

disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...

remix of her 1964 classic "

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

", was heard during a party scene. Additional songs originally recorded by Petula Clark were sung by the character of Brian Sellars throughout the film.

Reception

The film holds a 59% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, based on 34 reviews. In his review for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'',

Stephen Holden Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic. Biography Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...

described the film as "a Hollywood rarity, a movie about an icy grown-up heart-warmed by a child that doesn't wield emotional pliers to try to squeeze out tears…. It is a tribute to Mr. Branagh's considerable comic skills that he succeeds in making a potentially insufferable character likable by infusing him with the same sly charm that

Michael Caine Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, 14 March 1933) is a retired English actor. Known for his distinct Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over Michael Caine filmography, a career that spanned eight decades an ...

musters to seduce us into cozying up to his sleazier alter egos…. Mr. Kalesniko's satirically barbed screenplay, whose spirit harks back to the comic heyday of

Blake Edwards Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump; July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Edwards began his career in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon began writing screenplays and radio scripts ...

, stirs up an insistent verbal energy that rarely flags."

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for '' Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

of ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...

'' gave the movie a B and said, "Branagh, in his most forceful non-

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

screen performance, grounds even the softest moments in the angry revolt of his wit." Justine Elias of ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...

'' stated it was "slight but unendurable…its fractured time frame gets confusing". The film was the closing night film at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and won multiple festival awards. It was released as ''Mad Dogs and Englishmen'' in Australia.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 0207524, How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog *
How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
' at

AllMovie AllMovie (previously All Movie Guide) is an online database with information about films, television programs, television series, and screen actors. , AllMovie.com and the AllMovie consumer brand are owned by RhythmOne. History AllMovie was ...

2000 films 2000s crime comedy-drama films American black comedy films American crime comedy-drama films Films about people with cerebral palsy Nu Image films Films about identity theft Films produced by Michael Nozik Films shot in British Columbia Films shot in California Midlife crisis films 2000 black comedy films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films 2000 independent films Films about playwrights Films set in Los Angeles English-language crime comedy-drama films English-language black comedy films English-language independent films