Rent Lawn Dogs (1997)

Mowing Kids Toys and the Mail does not a good Lawn Dog make..... - Lawn Dogs review by Strovey

Lawn Dogs is an odd film. The strongest point, and once again a theme I come to many times with a Sam Rockwell film, is the chemistry between the leads that is to be seen on the screen. Mischa Barton, eleven years old at the time, is believable as the loose cannon Devon and the bond and innocent friendship between her and the always great Sam Rockwell’s Trent is believable and endearing. Not easy to do and it could have easily slipped into creepy or ‘that girl seems more like she’s thirty’ territory so it is a credit to the direction and more importantly the acting that it does not.

The film zips along at a great pace with the usual rich people are vapid and a step away from the devil trope that many films love to run with, but in Lawn Dogs defence having seen documentaries/interviews with people who live in gated communities it is probably closer with the displays of casual promiscuity, thoughtless violence, sexism and racism shown by the broadly written supporting cast than you might think. You only need to look at what is happening around the world and especially in the USA to realise that it is not as far-fetched as it once might have been.

Having said this the supporting cast has a feel of cardboard-cutout-villain about them, in particular the influential family's son Sean, who is a school-psychopath-bully that you have seen in every US drama, comedy and horror film ever made. In real life locked up before they were sixteen. It does seem they were in the film to make a point and they do.

Devon refers to the Slavic folklore of Baba Yaga throughout the film and because of how the film ends this fable underpins the whole thing. Unfortunately, if you are trying to make some fantasy-type drama and have nothing pointing to this until the final fifteen minutes or so all it will do is confuse the average viewer.

This is what happens here. Without ruining the ending it makes you question what has gone before. Are we seeing the imagination of a child, and thus an unreliable narrator? It is all true or a dream? I do not know. This is a misstep for me along with Trent’s visit to his parents which was awkward, odd and almost from another film coupled with some poor acting it did not sit well with me.

Lawn Dogs stands up to scrutiny. It is odd and will not be for some, the friendship between and grown man and a child made the powers-that-be in the USA and UK ban it but this only goes to show they utterly misunderstood what they were seeing, clearly Trent and Devon were the only normal people in the film everyone else was grotesque and horrific.

I would recommend Lawn Dogs, it has Sam Rockwell in it for starters, it is odd enough to keep you watching but I could not help feeling it was an opportunity missed to make a great ‘strange film’. We all love strange films do we not?