Apollo Movie Guide's Review of Lawn Dogs

On DVD

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In Theatres

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Lawn Dogs

Apollo Score:

Readers' Rating: 88/100

(38 votes - Click here to give your score)

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Lawn Dogs

Here's another case of the video box coming nowhere close to representing the film. The box shows you a woman pulling off her shoulder strap while gazing longingly at a young man. Obviously some marketer is happy to mislead people into renting or buying Lawn Dogs thinking it's a 'suburban wives sleep around' sort of movie. While Lawn Dogs does show suburban wives (and daughters and husbands and sons) up to relationship no good, that's only one small element of the film.

Lawn Dogs is about Devon Stockard (brilliantly played by Mischa Barton), a little girl who is entirely unimpressed by the shallowness and corruption of her parents and their wealthy neighbours. It's also about Trent Burns (Sam Rockwell), a young lawn maintenance guy from the other side of the tracks. Devon is wise beyond her years, perhaps because of her experience as a heart surgery patient. Trent is biding his time until he can get away for a fresh start somewhere else. Neither feels comfortable inside the gates of the pretentious Camelot Gardens subdivision, although this is where Devon lives and Trent works.

We follow Devon as she does what she must to satisfy the social-climbing aspirations of her parents, while escaping whenever she can to her own world of imagination. When she discovers Trent's dilapidated trailer in the woods, Devon has found a haven and she latches on to Trent like a limpet. Once this happens, it's only a matter of time before there's big trouble in Camelot Gardens.

Lawn Dogs is a blend of four parts reality to one part fantasy and four parts honest and compelling characters to one part shallow stereotypes. The mix works, particularly when Mischa Barton is on the screen. Barton comes across as a smart little kid without being another one of those wisecracking movie youngsters.

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