The Dog Dies at the End
The Dog Dies at the End is a movie that was popular at some point in the early nineties. Frequently shown to children (usually when Shrek or Finding Nemo are nowhere to be found) but rarely enjoyed, it documents the fictional relationship [1] between a boy (called Jack) and his dog (called Spot or something). During the course of the movie, the friendship grows and all the characters in some way learn something about themselves. The dog dies at the end.
Plot
Part 1: The Kid Gets His Dog
The movie opens with Jack's birthday party. He is blowing out the candles on his birthday cake and enjoying a cool, refreshing glass of Coca Cola, in a heart-warming scene for the whole family. However, it soon becomes clear that something is amiss: there are no other kids there. The only others present are his mother and his drunken racist grandmother who sits in the corner spitting and saying “I told you to have an abortion!”
His mother hands him a parcel, which he opens, and a puppy emerges gasping for air. “At last!” he shouts (the boy, not the dog) “A creature without the mental faculties to realize what a freak I am! He'll be my friend.”
Unfortunately, the course of puppy-ownership doesn't run smoothly. The boy's father returns home from his job at the bullet factory and is less than pleased to discover a new addition to the family. He is inexplicably opposed to the new dog and insists on getting rid of it [2]. However, his wife prevails upon him to keep the dog. The father is thus established as a hate-figure, in accordance with the movie's underlying feminist message. [3]
Part 2: A Journey of Self-Discovery
The boy and the dog grow closer together, as established by numerous emotionally manipulative shots of the pair playing in a field full of daisies in which the dog licks the boy's face.
It soon becomes clear that the boy is something of a social pariah: he is bullied and jeered at by a fat sweaty-looking kid and his similarly fat and sweaty friends. His father tells him to “stop being such a wuss” and to stand up to the bullies. [4] This is a spectacularly unsuccessful move as the bullies grab him by the collar and threaten to “ruff him up”, causing him to drop his glass of tasty, refreshing Coca Cola. But Spot leaps to the rescue. The bullies are terrified by the comically self-important yelping of a small dog and run away, never to bother him again.
Spot teaches Jack to come out of himself and express his true self to the world as only an animal of sub-human intelligence can. Jack joins the local baseball team, much to the pride of his father who, like all men, only understands the world in terms of sports, guns and beer.
It is the day of the big game between the local baseball team and the slightly-less-local baseball team. When it is Jack's turn to bat Spot runs onto the field much to the annoyance of everyone. Jack shouts at him to go home but Spot just stands there wagging his tail. Exasperated, Jack hits the dog with his bat, much to the dismay of his mother who is shown covering her face in disgust. This marks a turning point in their relationship, adding depth to an otherwise shallow and uninteresting story. Jack learns an important lesson that day. [5]
Part 3: The Big Action-Packed Climax
Spot runs away directly after the game and the whole neighbourhood is employed in the search, except for the boy's father, who says he “has to go to work”. [6] They search and search, with many heart-wrenching, emotionally-manipulative “mister have you seen my dog” moments, but to no avail. Jack decides to sneak out in the middle of the night to search for Spot in the haunted graveyard, making sure to bring a bottle of Coke for refreshment. There he stumbles upon a crypt in which a band of thieves are smuggling treasure of some kind. He meets Spot there and they end up being locked up in the crypt by the ruthless thieves who are stealing from the children's hospital (all are men). After biting Jack's face in revenge for the baseball-bat incident, Spot finds a secret way-out and they escape and subsequently alert the police – a feelgood ending for the whole family! (Or so they thought...)
Part 4: The End
We then hear a voice-over of Jack, grown up, who has joined the army or something, explaining how Spot taught him so much and friendship and all that meaningless sentiment. Then he says: “One day, we were playing in the yard, when Spot ran out after a ball...” The gruesome death is not shown on screen (this is a children's movie after all) but it is clear that Spot was run over.
The movie ends with a scene of Jack crying and being comforted by his mother. His father comes home and his mother explains that Spot was run over by a monster truck. [7] His father tactlessly offers to buy him a new one, thus establishing that men are incapable of understanding emotions and think that every problem can be solved by buying stuff. Women, by implication, are clever, gentle and kind which make them boring because people buying you stuff is much, much, better!
Critical Reception
The reaction to the movie among critics was rather mixed. Some described it as “an emotional roller-coaster”; “possibly the greatest dog-related movie of all time. I mean, what do we have to compare it to? 102 Dalmatians?” while others argued that “a perfectly bland movie was ruined by the dog's harrowing death at the end.” The makers responded by saying “It's nowhere near as violent as Hostel or Saw 4!”
One of the loudest critics on this movie was the German film-maker Roland Emmerich, who was so offended by the film's ending that he had to produce a number of disaster films such as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 where the dog, on the contrary, always survives at the end of the movie. The German doomsday prophet angrily remarked that "it will take the heat death of the universe to make me kill off even a single dog in any of my films, ever, after watching this horribly depressing film. On the other hand, I admit to having no problems with killing off billions of humans and a good number of whole other animal species too in my films, but dogs are big no-no"!
Psychologists report that showing the film to young children has lead to irreparable psychological scarring and implore parents “never to show it to anyone, even adults. Why did the dog have to die at the end? Why couldn't the boy die instead?”
The film has been criticized for its unscrupulous use of product placement in order to sell Coca Cola to impressionable children.
See Also
Notes
- ^ Non-sexual. I mean, I know this is Uncyclopedia, but there's a line!
- ^ By drowning it in the nearby pond.
- ^ That all men are bastards while women give puppies to lonely children.
- ^ Thus establishing that all men are idiots who know no other way to resolve a problem than with a bravado-laden stand-off. Women, by implication, are clever, gentle and kind.
- ^ That lesson presumably being “don't beat your dog with a baseball bat.”
- ^ Thus establishing that men care more about making bullets than they do about finding lost puppies. Women, by implication, are clever, gentle and kind.
- ^ The local monster truck rally took place the next day.
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