Critic Reviews

Director Ken Marino’s contemporary tale of intertwined lives will still disarm you eventually with its unabashed cheeriness and generous spirit.

There’s a refreshingly contained, deadpan sass to many of the characters’ personalities – and even Marino’s direction of the actors — that makes these people appealing, not abrasive, and which never devolves into the needlessly crude or ham-fistedly improvised, as so often happens in the more raucously engineered R-rated comedies.

The film is funnier than it has every right to be, given the boilerplate premise of dogs bringing people together, but Marino and co. go for the brass ring.

No spoiler here that all unfolds with twists and complications but lands in a colorful kibble bowl of happy endings. Surprise does lie in the fact that such familiar material can deliver some unexpected pleasures.

As a cinematic mutt, it possesses a certain scruffy charm, as long as you’re in the mood to forgive its lapses.

As any dog lover will tell you, our four-legged friends make everything better. That’s especially true when it comes to the genial if overly familiar ensemble comedy “Dog Days,” whose four-legged stars bring out the best in the movie’s crisscross of humans — and in the film itself.

Dog Days moves along, mostly pleasantly and at its worst is a somewhat-forced good time.

Unfortunately, the behaviors on display have virtually nothing to do with real life, serving as empty escapism for the dog lover in all of us.

For undemanding audiences not looking for too much substance in the summer's dog days, Dog Days should go down relatively easy.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny. But an engaging cast — human and canine — give it, and us, almost enough warm-and-fuzzies to get by.