User Reviews

I saw this movie when it was first released and it always comes to mind when anyone mention a favorite movie. If you love animals and are sensitive to the "place" of gays in society just a few decades ago , you have to be touched by the interactions of middle class with lower class Brits,the straight world with the gay world and how one creature "EVIE" a German shepherd brings out the best and the worst in humankind . It is a sweet , gentle story with laughs and tears and the dramatic tension of wondering what will be EVIE"S fate . The acting is wonderful.The script is tight and every word of dialogue rings true . The final scene in the park is one of my all time favorites . You can't help but want to watch the movie again if just to marvel at how well acted and perfectly cast are all of the characters. Unfortunately the movie is out of print but shows up on cable every once in a while.

It's nice that someone wanted to adapt this book, but there are a few big problems. One: Johnny is supposed to be very beautiful with "honey colored skin". Gary Oldman? It's like, as John Waters would say, Jaws without a shark. What's worse though is that the novel is told from the point of view of Frank. The film is too objective in its writing. Not that give a whit about Frank "growing" which he does, to understand Megan and finally respect her. The fact is the fun of the book is Frank's bad attitude towards these people who, in his view, and perhaps even objectively, if your objectivity doesn't match that of the screenwriter, treat him abominably. Instead we get this pathetic old queen with a poor dye job who and instead of identifying with him and his curmudgeonly prospective, we find almost painful to watch! In effect not only the "arc" but the whole feel of the story is undermined.

In spite of the fact that Alan Bates and Gary Oldman are great actors, they are completely upstaged by Liz Smith (the British character actress, not the new york-based gossip columnist) as Oldman's mother, who along with her husband (Max Wall), cakes in Oldman's dog when he is sent to prison. Bates and Oldman, one time lovers, have remained friends and when Bates goes to visit the dog, she learns that the dog is being mistreated by Wall, and often beaten. Smith, seemingly naive about the abuse, claims that all is well, but Bates and the dog manage to bond even though Wall goes out of his way too beat the dog with his stick when Bates is around.

It's depressing stuff, a return to the British kitchen sink dramas that Bates did in the 1960's, with some good visuals of the surrounding area of this working class neighborhood, but I didn't find the characters outside of Smith's dotty matron to be well-rounded or fully detailed, forcing the viewer to attempt to care about characters they know really nothing about. There are too many miscellaneous subplots that just slows the film down, and it becomes a very trying and ponderous drama where the relationship between man and dog doesn't really fully bond until later in the film. The beautiful German Shepherd is trained well, but it became rather disconcerting to hear the dog yelping in both pain and loneliness while Bates goes on and on about not getting any correspondence from Oldman. This definitely seems like a film that would have played better on BBC rather than be released in the theaters.

As London recovers from World War II, an aimless young man - who is bisexual and already married - named Johnny (Gary Oldman) is sent to prison. He gives his dog Evie to his parents, Tom and Millie, who are conniving at best and abusive at worst. The man who really falls in love with the dog is Johnny's older ex-lover and best friend Frank (Alan Bates).

Based on the 1960 J.R. Ackerley novel, this film was directed by Colin Gregg, who also directed the Liam Neeson-starring Lamb, which you guessed it, is also on this Mill Creek box set.

If you ever wonder how much our world has changed, when the trailer for this movie played in the U.S., it was sold as a light-hearted comedy about a dog and nothing was said about the romance between two of its leads.