The Dogwalker (2000)

Jerry Cooper is a Tom Sawyer of the 21st century, who, having fallen on hard times, is struggling with the reality of sleeping in his car for the first time. When he stumbles upon an old woman named Alma and her dog Lucky, he believes his luck may finally be changing, as the woman’s daughter, Helene, hires him to take care of the flinty old matriarch. Jerry quickly finds out that he has bitten off more than he bargained for when Helene and her sexually charged teenage daughter each want more from thin that just walking grandma’s dog. Jerry enlists three black friends to sort out the situation but things go quickly from bad to worse in this contemporary LA story mixing class, race and sex until you don’t know who is the pet anymore.

independent comedy has its moments

Independent films are one of the few places left to look for original material, studio Hollywood being slavishly devoted to (safer) sequels. That being said, this particular low-budget piece borrowed much of its premise from the mainstream "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."

From the outset, you have to suspend disbelief a little to swallow the idea that young, good looking, intelligent, and well-dressed Will Stewart can't get a job and is so down on his luck as to be reduced to panhandling. Additionally, it seems the part was written for a black character, since all of Stewart's friends are black. But if you can get past that, the movie is very well acted and compulsively watchable. It ends with a whimper rather than a bang, but that is because the filmmakers seemed to want to hang on to realism rather than embrace the fantasy trajectory of the movie. June 6, 2007

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