The Dog Lover

It’s a prosaic piece of muckraking, shot in a functional flat visual style, but it grazes a nerve.

The movie is shamelessly manipulative on several levels, and the cast members do their respective bits effectively.

Under the stilted direction of Alex Ranarivelo, it's all as clunkily melodramatic as it sounds, with the climactic trial sequences proving particularly slow going.

The film’s prevailing theme may be that nothing is black and white, but the execution, with its strident lobbyists, salt-of-the-earth farmers and onscreen admonition to “investigate before you donate,” proves spottier than a kennel full of caged Dalmatians.