DogMan
It can be enjoyable to see a skilled performer chew the scenery, especially if they’re given a good script and/or strong collaborators. Caleb Landry Jones has neither in “Dogman,” an inert, sweaty crime drama about a disabled dog shelter owner who’s also an amateur drag performer. As Doug, a twitchy misfit who loves dogs and seems like he was designed from the ground up as a Showy Acting Role for this gifted actor pouty mouthed murmuring at sub decibel levels, hard leans into writer/director Luc Besson’s tin-eared dialogue and chintzy image making it quickly becomes impossible to enjoy watching Jones bluster his way through what should’ve been a rare lead role.
Besson (“The Fifth Element”) often encourages Jones to take whiffs of big swings as Doug, a loquacious introvert showboat who’s constantly tested (and underestimated) by cosmic injustice after cosmic injustice. Doug’s character sketch is that of a sullen martyr with a mood board full of singularly endearing underdog qualities (in addition to saving pooches, Doug loves cosplaying as Edith Piaf), which Besson and Jones never pull together into something that looks like an actual person.
Jones tends to get by on his waxey-hard looks in smaller roles coy mischief with alarming regularity. He always looks sickly and threatening; roving eyes, watery scowl, so you can easily understand why he was perfect for the part of Doug, who gets arrested early on while wearing tacky pink dress with matching forearm length gloves and then spends most of the movie telling his sordid backstory to sympathetic but under developed police psychiatrist Dr. Evelyn Decker (Jojo T. Gibbs).
Doug braces himself with an unfortunate Blanche DuBois Southern accent and lots of preening hard stares throughout his meandering conversations with Evelyn, neither become more endearing with over use, especially given how unconvincing Besson’s dialogue tends to be, and how over edited most of Doug and Evelyn’s dialogue scenes are together.
Evelyn usually sets Doug up for more self-pitying observations about his sad life. We see some choppy flashbacks that confirm how unlovable and neglectful the world can be, even for a proud survivor like Doug. He will later strut out of his wheelchair (with some over-emphasized difficulty) and drape himself across a silhouette of Christ’s cross: “I am standing for you!” he bellows as “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” blares.
There is more realism, but less realistic detail in skimpy cut away scenes set during the movie’s present day, featuring dogs and some lame human antagonists for Doug. There are some cops and other blue collar government functionaries, who threaten to shut down Doug’s grungy, but independently owned dog shelter. Then there is the nosy and instantly infatuated insurance claims adjuster Ackerman (Christopher Denham), who mostly gives Doug more chances to scoff about how lonely he gets without human companionship. There is also a stereotypical Mexican gangbanger named El Verdugo (John Carlos Aguilar) who harasses one of Doug’s neighbors never on camera or mentioned beyond an early scene and then eventually gets into some canned beef with Doug. None of these sub plots tells you anything about Doug that Jones’s exhausting performance doesn’t already.
Having casted Jones as Doug may have been ironically the biggest mistake in making “Dogman” given Besson’s indifferent direction and sketchy scenario. Slower-paced scenes and more generous dialogue are needed by Jones to match his twitchy, actorly tics. He never lets you forget that he’s acting, which makes even the raspiest murmur sound like a megaphone enhanced stage whisper. You can see the worst of his character and performance during Doug’s drag scenes, like when he emphatically lip-syncs along to a recording of Piaf singing “La Foule.” Presumably meant to look bad, but still it looks more like the MC5 than La Môme is Doug’s wig.
Jones’s campy performance is even harder to take seriously, not just because of his stock gestures, but his audience’s thunderstruck response. Then again, it’s not hard to see that Jones isn’t solely responsible for such a disappointing performance; Besson’s extra schlocky sensibilities seem ideally suited for his star, but he never gives Jones anything worth showing off.
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