Citizen Dog (2004)

Citizen Dog admittedly does remind me of Amelie, the delightful French film with impeccable cinematography that cornered the market on wild whimsy in 2001. In contrast to whimsy, however, Citizen Dog gives us a steady dose of magical realism, drawn in bright colors but with limp acrylics and clotted composition; its palette is eye-popping, but the scene composition is cluttered and the story has a weak emotional impact. In a word, you grow deeply fond of Amelie and her inner world, while Pod and Jin are cute but misguided and at best (p)lucky. Amelie achieves her goals by intentional and moral choices; Pod and Jin do so by accident. Quirkiness is integral throughout the script of Amelie; it is episodic to Citizen Dog. The moral of Amelie might be “Random acts of kindness can change the world”; the stated moral of Citizen Dog is "You don't always find what you're looking for. Sometimes it's when you stop looking that it just finds you." I could watch Amelie every day for years and not grow tired, but I would watch Citizen Dog one more time, because it is inventive and cute. Where else do you have a friend who gives you a daily moped ride to work, but doesn’t wear a helmet, so one day he has become a moped-riding zombie? Where else does a jetsetting young woman get in your cab who looks and talks like a little girl, but smokes and swears? Where else do you find a cigarette-smoking teddy bear who swears? (OK, Ted and Ted 2 – but that teddy is a savant compared to this fuzz-for-brains.) It’s endearing that Jin has a compulsiveness to clean and organize things, and is fixated on the foreign tome she constantly peruses (longs to be able to read), but that did not work out as she hoped in the end. So her next obsession is to collect recyclables, until she has built a mountain of plastic that reaches to the moon. With Amelie, the story is a banquet and its culmination is the dessert; with Citizen Dog, the story is amusing but unsubstantial, and the ending leaves you wondering if the gecko tail between your fingers will hold. 4 stars. (4-26-2016)