Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Directed by: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Michelle Williams

**

Making a movie about a character's "friendship" with a pet isn't exactly an easy task. After all, you are essentially creating a one-sided relationship. Tom Hanks had a relationship with a Volleyball once but even Cast Away wasn't a great film, just a great performance. Well, Michelle Williams, for the most part, was very good as Wendy in this movie but again, the movie wasn't all that great. So that left me with one question. Why make a movie only to display a performance?

This is otherwise known as a character piece and of course the sole objective was not just to show off a performance. Wendy is on a road trip with her dog Lucy to Alaska where she expects to get a job. At the moment however, she's in Oregon, strapped for cash. She sleeps in her car until a parking lot security gaurd wakes her and tells her she needs to move her car... but her car won't start. Thank goodness this security guard is just a sweet old man with whom Wendy develops a friendship. This character, played well by Walter Dalton is about as cliched as they come. His job is to guard the parking lot everyday from 8am to 8pm so he's conveniently there every day to point Wendy in the direction for what she needs and he's old so he's had plenty of life experiences to share.

If things weren't bad enough, Wendy gets arrested for shoplifting... (she has $525 in cash which may be all she has, but all she was buying was dogfood... Just pay for it Wendy!) ... and by the time she posts bail, her dog Lucy is gone. I didn't really feel all that bad. Wendy wasn't at all unlikable, she seemed like a very average person just trying to get on with her life, but just because people like this may exist in the real world, does not necessarily mean they can carry a movie. So, while I don't wish any ill will upon her, I don't really care when Wendy loses her dog. Also, there's never the feeling that she won't get her back because trusty old security guard says he lost a dog once, but she came back two weeks later.

Williams is good in the film. Not great. Like her character, there's not enough about her to really carry the movie into a truly good character piece. In that sense, she played the character well. The movie is pretty simple and for that I give it credit. At no point did it try to take an unwarranted dramatic turn just to satisfy its audience. However, just because it didn't do that, doesn't mean something else couldn't be done to satisfy. And lastly, don't make movies about someone and their dog... even good ones are kind of pathetic.