BAXTER
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson
82 min., not rated, Drama, 1991, In French with English subtitles Director: Jerome Boivin Cast: sorry, missed them
The life of a dog, as told by a dog. The dog, Baxter, travels from owner to owner trying to find one he likes. The first owner is an old lady who just sits around all the time doing nothing fun and worrying about when she is going to die. The second owners are a couple of young lovers. The final owner is a sadistic boy who is really into Naziism.
I found BAXTER to be a generally unappealing film. It does, however, seem to have a message behind it. I feel that Baxter represents the average person. The old lady represents people who have given up on life. The lovers represent people who feel that life is nothing but fun and that they don't have any responsibility. The boy represents overachievers, and sadistic fanatic. Baxter has to find where he fits in. I think he represents the human race trying to find where they fit in. With all things considered, I give BAXTER a two on a scale of zero to five. BAXTER is unrated but contains female nudity, adult situations, violence, and explicit language.
The dog picked to portray Baxter is a not very attractive looking dog. This gives the film an unpleasant feel. There is really nothing bad to say about the acting. The actors/actresses seem to do a good job, but the characters they play are not very pleasant: the old lady, who has given up on life moping around; the two lovers, who at first only care about themselves; the boy, who is brilliant, psychotic, and brutal. Speaking of the boy, his character is especially chilling. Being psychologically able to do some of the things he does is almost unthinkable. The settings for the film are grim and unpleasant to look at too.
I don't recommend that you go see this film, or if you do that you go to a very cheap showing so that you don't come out thinking that you wasted your money. I really didn't enjoy it very much. One last note, this film is not for animal lovers, because of what happens to some animals in the film.
Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews