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Poster for How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog

How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog

2002 · 1h 47m · R Comedy, Drama
Directed by Michael Kalesniko

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Overview

The story of Peter McGowan, a chain-smoking, impotent, insomniac playwright who lives in Los Angeles. Once very successful, he is now in the tenth year of a decade-long string of production failures. He finds himself bonding with a new neighbor's lonely young daughter who has mild cerebral palsy; and during one of his middle-of-the-night strolls, he encounters his oddball doppelgänger.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
58%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Has an unusually high ratio of laughs per minute.

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
Rotten

Falsehoods pile up, undermining the movie's reality and stifling its creator's comic voice.

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
Rotten

Kenneth Branagh's energetic sweet-and-sour performance as a curmudgeonly British playwright grounds this overstuffed, erratic dramedy in which he and his improbably forbearing wife contend with craziness and child-rearing in Los Angeles.

Gene Seymour, Newsday
Rotten

... comes alive only when it switches gears to the sentimental.

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Fresh

Audiences conditioned to getting weepy over saucer-eyed, downy-cheeked moppets and their empathetic caretakers will probably feel emotionally cheated by the film's tart, sugar-free wit.

Stephen Holden, New York Times

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