Mon chien stupide

Excellent film. Completely different from what I expected. Maybe hit too close to home. I was thinking comedy. It had very funny moments, but the overall film, was real life. Family. Expectations. Disappointments. Love.

If you enjoy French family drama (isn't there always?) , you'll enjoy this movie based on a novella ( My Dog Stupid) by American writer John Fante.

Far from being a comedy except for the antics of Stupide, a huge grey Neapolitan Mastiff.

The actor Yvan Attal plays an award winning writer with writer's block. And of course since it's French there is a long suffering wife played by Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Still an enjoyable movie if only because of the dog, Stupide.

I have to admit the beginning, well after the initial voice over, so the beginning as in the first real scene in the house, is quite something. Great dialog, super funny and it feels quite light. But as with life in general it does not stay that way. And by that I don't just mean the dialog but the mood and lightness the movie had at first - or seemed to have.

The acting is superb and the script/dialog throughout is quite something to behold. The relationships seem as realistic depicted as they can be. Even if you don't agree with one of the characters the motivations for their actions are clear cut. They all make sense. And in between all of them ... a dog. You might love that or hate it (I know one person who is not impressed with pets or animals at all - so no winning over for her) ... and that is before thinking about all the drama that lies within the movie

Wonderful and endearing black comedy. Great movie to watch with young adults. Very well directed by actor/director Yvan Attal. Wife and superb actress Charlotte Gainsbourg does a great job too. Just a great example of life, family and enduring through it.

The first part deftly blends comedy with drama;director/actor Attal uses a classic comic situation for something it was not meant for: the (very big) dog settles down in a bourgeois house and the family cannot get rid of this burdensome animal ; but dad ,a writer who has been suffering from cramp for years , is fed up with his depressed wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and his restless offspring : three boys and a girl ;the dog becomes his true mate ,he calls him "Stupid" (in the title ,it's really a proper noun).There's a lot of humor ,as this dog has a tendency to sexually assault the male persons;although Attal uses and abuses the voice over to tell us how he feels nostagic for his days in Rome ,where he was able to let his inspiration flow, but it was before he was a family man,the movie survives the intellectual intentions .

With a few exceptions,the second part is preachy,edifying ,sophomoric and dull ,as tedious as Miss Gainsbourg's lecture on Musset' "Lorenzaccio" ; the story becomes predictable , implausible (the essays ), and " you -shall- be- a- man ,my son " in the grand tradition of Kipling; all the lines between the born again writer and his editor have been heard at least a hundred times or more by the average viewer: it's the last line , thanks one more time to this good old dog ,which saves it from the pure cliché .It's also the presence of the pet which saves the improbable scene between the professor and the writer .The story drags on and on , with a little help from the music ,a lovely variation on Lennon/McCartney's "and I love her"in the last sequences,nicely filmed .

Dedicated to director Claude Berri.