I saw this at the Toronto Film Festival. Solo (Giovanni Ribisi) spends a fortune going to his psychiatrist (Don Cheadle) and then runs out of money ... so his psychiatrist suggests he get a pet ... the funniest looking dog ... and then his dog meets another dog and he meets another dog owner, a stripper (Lynn Collins) with a huge loaner dog who takes a bite out of Solo's much smaller pet. But he has no money to pay for the vet ... complications (and romantic situations) ensue when he borrows money from the stripper ... there are very funny "silent" bits in the movie which comment on modern life in the city ... I enjoyed it a lot ... besides being funny, the subtext about relationships made it touching as well ... It reminded me of a Woody Allen movie -- Ribisi plays it just as deadpan. The theatre was full of other people who seemed to be laughing along with me. There was a very funny Q & A with Scott Caan and Geovanni Ribisi which followed the film and may have skewed my enjoyment. What follows is not my writing but I agreed with the writeup they put in the TIFF film book: "Ribisi is sympathetic as a man whose inner disorder meets his outer chaos at a pivotal point in his life, and Collins, perhaps best- known for her stellar turn as Portia in The Merchant of Venice, provides Lola with such three- dimensional texture that we long to be her friend. As Casper, Caan provides an antic counterpoint to Solo's ennui and, as director of this delightful film, he sends a sweetly funny love note to his home, the city of Los Angeles." -- Jane Schoettle
Review of The Dog Problem
