‘Dogman’ Review: Caleb Landry Jones Stars in a Ludicrous Howler from One-Time Stylist Luc Besson
variety.comJessica Kiang Check under most any post relating to the recently released trailer for Luc Besson’s “Dogman,” and you’ll find one, if not several responses riffing, to various degrees of enthusiasm, on the theme of “OMG, what if ‘Joker’ but with dogs?” That rhetorical question can now be answered, following this numbskulled nonsense movie’s inexplicable Venice Competition premiere, with a resounding “If only.” The bludgeoningly obvious, creatively inert, deathly dull tale of a cross-dressing misfit in a wheelchair who favors canine company over that of humans, it is scarcely fit to lap from the same water bowl as Todd Phillips’ controversial Golden Lion winner.
Even those who didn’t much like “Joker” have to admit that it did not so actively treat its audience as if they were brain dead that everyone left feeling about 30 IQ points dumber than when they went in.
Much like Terrence Malick’s marginally more accomplished “The Tree of Life,” the film starts out by classing things up with a quote. “When man is in trouble, God sends him a dog,” is apparently an epigraph coined by Alphonse de Lamartine, a French poet and statesman who would no doubt be wondering what kind of trouble he was in for God to send him a “Dogman” if, lucky guy, he hadn’t been dead for 180 years.
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