Citizen Dog

Citizen Dog is a Thai surreal romantic comedy with great visual style and use of sound and music. I really love this director's use of oddly bright pastel colors in both this movie and his previous film, Tears of the Black Tiger. It also features some off-the-wall creative touches like a zombie taxi motorcycle driver, a talking (and smoking and drinking) teddy bear, and many other oddities.

It's explained at the start that the main character, Pod, is a rather hapless person who never manages to do anything right. He tends to fumble his way through life almost as if he's a bystander rather than a participant. While this is integral to the story the movie is trying to tell I found that it got on my nerves a bit. Pod is one of those people that's about as dynamic and charismatic as a bowl of oatmeal, and he's the focal point for much of Citizen Dog.

Pod's love interest isn't a whole lot better. While I appreciate the goal of going after your dreams no matter how crazy they may be, after a while it became mildly annoying to watch the tremendously stupid ways she chooses to pursue hers. I was somewhat amused by the conclusion of her quest but I don't think it will surprise too many people.

On the positive side the movie is very visually creative and appealing.  The music is also enjoyable and suits the movie's odd style wonderfully. The opening theme song has the whole city of Bangkok singing along and is simply great; I loved it and watched that part several times. There were so many unusual and interesting pieces of the movie that I enjoyed (like Thongchai the talking teddy bear and the mountain of bottles) that I ended up liking the film quite a bit even though the core story itself was rather cliché. It just seems strange to have wrapped so much joyous originality around such a typical and somewhat bland main theme, and the movie seems to bog down in the middle because of it.

Still, the main theme of having dreams and finding happiness certainly isn't hard to empathize with, and if you're in the mood for something out of the ordinary it's not hard to recommend this film. The world of Citizen Dog is definitely out-of-sync with the real world, but if you can just sit back and enjoy the weirdness you may like it.