The defence The Sentimental Softie
“Sincerity is not manipulation.”
The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.
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How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
Comedy · Drama · 2002
The story of Peter McGowan, a chain-smoking, impotent, insomniac playwright who lives in Los Angeles. Once very successful, he is now in the tenth year of a decade-long string of production failures. He finds himself bonding with a new neighbor's lonely young daughter who has mild cerebral palsy; and during one of his middle-of-the-night strolls, he encounters his oddball doppelgänger.
Movie details
How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
2002 Comedy · Drama 1h 47m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
6.8 / 10
3.7K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
59 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
40 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
5.9 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
The story of Peter McGowan, a chain-smoking, impotent, insomniac playwright who lives in Los Angeles. Once very successful, he is now in the tenth year of a decade-long string of production failures. He finds himself bonding with a new neighbor's lonely young daughter who has mild cerebral palsy; and during one of his middle-of-the-night strolls, he encounters his oddball doppelgänger.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog?
For the defence
The Sentimental Softie
“You came to feel something, and you will.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Cool Ironist
“Feeling things is a little embarrassing.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Michael Kalesniko
Written by
Michael Kalesniko
Kenneth Branagh
Peter McGowan
Robin Wright
Melanie McGowan
S
Suzi Hofrichter
Amy Walsh
Lynn Redgrave
Edna
Jared Harris
False Peter
Peter Riegert
Larry
David Krumholtz
Brian Sellars
Court is in session
Put How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Cool Ironist
“The strings are showing.”
Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.