Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006)

I love this movie so much

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a movie written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (that also happens to have the gorgeous Morgan Murphy in the cast). If you read the synopsis you will immediately think this is an out there comedy, but in actuality Goldthwait does a brilliant job turning this into a nice little film. The story is about a woman, who in college- out of boredom- 'sucked off' her dog. Years later she is in a serious relationship and struggles with telling her fiancé about her 'experience' while in college. While the two are visiting her parents, she tells him about it but is overhead by her brother who confesses the secret to the entire family. Certainly, you can imagine this is a perfect scenario to have a 'Meet the Fockers' type of comedy but it turns out to be more about how families, friends and lovers learn to accept people and choose how far truth goes. Of course, there is humor in the movie- very dark humor- but you could change her secret to be her having killed someone, or her being a prostitute, etc. and the masses would get behind this as a 'heart-warming' movie. Instead, Goldthwait, chooses a very deviant event and then tells the story of a family healing. In the three films I have seen that Goldthwait has written and directed (God Bless America, World's Greatest Dad and Sleeping Dogs Lie), he has done a brilliant job of taking an extreme deviant event and intertwining it with a mainstream story. I thought it was brilliant of Goldthwait to avoid the mainstream 'confessions' and just go for the gusto. On a side note, I seriously cannot get enough of Morgan Murphy. There seems to be some connection between Murphy and Goldthwait as she appears in all of his films- and she is certainly not best known for her acting but rather her writing.

This movie is a complete failure on every level.If you are hoping to watch an outrageous comedy, filled with laughs, that dances on the edge, this is not that movie, despite the outlandishness that might be expected from the topic in question. Instead, despite a few characters that behave for short periods in a fashion that suggests comic relief, this movie is a dreary-tawdry tragedy that resolves itself in a semi-happy conclusion, but at the cost of coherence, plot or character development. The shrugs-your-shoulder ending will arrive at the point which you no longer give a crap.The cast is lead by mediocre unknowns and fleshed out with recognizable TV veterans Geoff Pierson and Brian Poshen, both of whom who have talent to elevate their roles beyond this dismal script. The rest of the cast do not fare as well. Melinda Hamilton is a bland somewhat whiny lead, matched by both Bryce Johnson and Colby French as her romantic counterparts. There is little chemistry or fire between either match.The story is basically this: Amy(Melinda) has a disgusting secret. She reveals it to her fiancé. Her family learns it. Tragedy ensues, Her life falls apart. She continues on. The problem is that none of this is played for belly laughs, as one hopes it would be coming from Goldwaith. The story's arc is also distorted by the lead character having a deep relationship that develops through the telling of the tale, but suddenly that is dropped and the investment that we have made in the romance which is the basis of the story comes to no conclusion. She simply throws him away and starts up with someone else, as if it all didn't matter anyway."Nothing matters and just lie about it, and who cares anyway" is not a great theme for a movie. I didn't laugh much throughout and I learned nothing. I would recommend not bothering.

This film is totally unbelievable. The only way a girl would perform this act on a dog is if she had serious mental health issues or had a long history of sexual abuse or was under duress. Yet we are asked to believe that an otherwise 'normal' healthy female just got a bit bored and 'made a little mistake' and oops had a sexual encounter with a dog. What's more it never had any detrimental affect on her ever again except when she tells someone.Not she was raped by a dog or the dog did something she couldn't resist - she actively initiated oral sex and completed this activity with a pet dog of her own choice. She wasn't on drugs or anything she just 'felt like it'.The rest of the film seeks to put this action in a light of 'hey it could happen to anyone she's only being honest'.But really for this to be believed we have to believe that this is a woman who is capable of doing absolutely ANYTHING if she 'just feels like it'. Think about it - could she have considered the rights and wrongs of this action before carrying it out? If she had she would have stopped in her tracks. Human beings have instinctive boundaries for reasons. If we are now to start considering bestiality as a 'cute' little aberration, what is next? Child abuse? Yet the 'heroine' is portrayed as a hard done by, nice girl who had one moment of aberration. If she had been forced to carry out this act by an abuser - the story might have made more sense and I would have been able to accept the storyline. But there is no way that anyone carries out the prolonged activity required and referred to even once - if there is not some deep, disturbance that requires a great deal of psychiatric help. This is NO WAY a one off happening in an otherwise perfect life.I know this is just a film, but it is through normalising behaviour such as this via the media that society becomes desensitised and more and more awful realities become possible.I could imagine an abuser showing this to a child to persuade them that it isn't such a big deal and then moving on with their agenda. It could also be used by an abuser to underline to a child not to tell about the abuse - because look how people will react to you if you do.This is not about truth. The director WANTS people to think it's about truth. This is about degradation and how easily people (the viewing public)can be manipulated into accepting the most appalling concepts if wrapped up in the right way. The watching public are being manipulated, degraded and laughed at.This is a film in which the actors and the viewers are being humiliated and made fools of in a very sophisticated way by a clever but extremely disturbed film writer.This film appears to me to be being used as a vehicle for the creator of the film to get off on the excitement of playing with your mind in an abusive manner. I don't know whether it is conscious on their part - but it is the most classic example of Mind F***k that I have ever encountered.I hope that this doesn't offend anyone too much. But if you watched this film - I don't think there is any room left to be offended by anything any more.

If one wants to have a character in a movie have a disturbing sexual encounter that would shame that character in later life the only thing left that an audience would see as shameful was bestiality and now it has been done. Judging by some of the other comments even that did not succeed that well. I cannot remember one funny scene though I have to admit, I had to turn it off before it was finished. I did watch a part of the director's commentary and it appears he was as surprised as anyone that the movie was doing well. If you want to get the same feeling you get from this movie but only cheaper, stick your head in a pile of manure and breath deeply.