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Old Man Dogs (1997)
pretty pathetic
Seeing as this is the only film I know of that was shot in my hometown of Londonderry, New Hampshire, you'd expect me to have a little favoritism for it. Unfortunately, no amount of local flavor can salvage this movie from the depths of boredom. The evil minions of Pitiful Acting, Horrendous Writing, and Agonizing Soundtrack let their powers combine to form a Captain Planet of bad movies.
The plot, concerning a young couple who dare to hike up a mountain (wowee zowee) is about as far from compelling as Londonderry is from Hollywood, where movies with actual budgets are made. At times I found myself so enthralled that I had to force myself to fast-forward the tape... perhaps "enthralled" isn't the correct word.
I gave this movie a 2 on the rating scale, but only because a) I recognize certain scenes from the area around my town, which lends a certain novelty to it, and b) ridiculing this movie while viewing it was mildly entertaining. Holding an enemy's eyes open and forcing him to view this film would have a more detrimental effect on his life than the films Malcolm MacDowell was forced to view in A Clockwork Orange.
The only {{SPOILER}} I can think to add concerns the death of the main character's girlfriend. It would seem that the audience is meant to feel extreme sadness after her dramatic assumption-based, off-camera-plunge-to-a-violent-death scene, but even the main character doesn't look too disappointed. Perhaps that's because the obnoxious, incessant, fingerpicked background folk guitar actually stops for a few moments when she slips from a rock and "falls" (is dragged off the screen). In my book, the precious few seconds of no-background-music were well worth the life of a deathly static and profoundly uninteresting character. Keep an eye out for the look of utter unconcern on the main character's face when his lover plummets off-camera from an obviously fake cliff to her presumably horrific end. That's the most entertaining thing in the whole film.
If you're one of the few people who's actually heard of this movie, chances are you're from Londonderry. So go to Video Update and rent something else!