PATRICK Review - Dog Tired

SPOILER REVIEW

Despite a brilliant performance by Beattie Edmondson in the lead role, a cliché script and dated physical comedy makes Patrick an unoriginal rom-com with a tone so sweet it’s almost sickly.

If you think back long enough, to 2004 in fact, you might vaguely remember the existence of a live-action movie featuring the lasagne-loving ginger cat Garfield. It was an inoffensive and simplistic kids’ movie with a few genuine laughs and many flat jokes. Unintentionally paying homage to Garfield is not something you really want to do, but while watching Patrick, I couldn’t help but think of it. Patrick doesn’t have any talking animals, a movie trend which seems to have gone out of fashion, but it can’t help but point at its eponymous pug while shouting “look at the cute doggy and give us good ratings everyone!” It feels like a sitcom episode stretched out to feature-length, and the result is a half-hearted rom-com that is neither romantic nor funny. At a stretch, it might convince your partner to buy a dog, but that’s really pushing it.

Beattie Edmondson plays Sarah Francis, a young woman whose life is in a mess. Living in the shadow of her more successful sister and in the aftermath of failed romantic relationships, her grandmother suddenly passes away. In grandma’s will, she discovers that she’s inherited a pampered pug by the name of Patrick. Forced to take Patrick in, her life is turned upside down by a dog who is seemingly too intelligent for his own good. What follows is the Journey of Self-Discovery and Life Improvement where she meets various other B-list actors and actresses playing dog owners and side characters who all somehow inexplicably know each other.

Without Edmondson, this film would be a lot worse. She is unquestionably this movie’s lone standout star, something which ought to make you suspicious since there is a surprising amount of British acting talent involved in this film in some way or another. She perfectly portrays a hapless young woman struggling to come to terms with her new teaching job and the responsibilities of owning a dog, from taking Patrick out on exhausting walks to dealing with the inevitable fallout of his seemingly endless shenanigans. She acts fantastically, dedicating herself to a film that unfortunately has her slipping on every proverbial banana skin in existence, and makes her personal struggles low-stakes. At one point, she’s even evicted, something which barely phases her and presents nothing more than a minor speedbump on her journey to self-fulfilment. Out of love? That’s okay because Patrick will lead her to chance encounters with fellow dog owners, all of whom happen to be highly attractive and romantically compatible males. Edmondson miraculously powers through all that to deliver a performance worthy of a much better drama film.

The story is so feel-good and sweet it just might make you sick. Its subplots are incredibly low-stakes and seem to wrap themselves up neatly with happy endings with little to no involvement by the characters themselves. Sarah has trouble dealing with a class full of teenagers, but after a little bit, they’re all deeply engaged with what she’s trying to teach them. She and Patrick come to an arrangement without much trouble at all. Romcoms invariably tend to end in two different ways: either the couple realise they’re perfect for each other and stick by each other, or they realise they deserve better and walk away having learned a valuable lesson about love etcetera from the whole painful experience. Whether these endings pay off ultimately depends on the kind of drama the character goes through. Sarah barely encounters any meaningful obstacles on her journey, so at certain points, it’s hard to bring yourself to care despite Edmondson’s driven performance. All the little problems resolved themselves just in time for the happy ending and the credits.

It's light, even by the usual romcom standards. The humour mostly involves Patrick breaking or destroying something, and Sarah returning home to discover it and being forced to pick up after him. The film was trying to get me to laugh at Sarah accidentally putting her foot in a bowl of dog food or discovering Patrick in her bed, about to munch down on something he pulled out of the bin. I didn’t. I was under the distinct impression that the sort of borderline crass comedy that relies solely on people encountering or doing humiliating and disgusting things was finally going away, despite the attempts of people like Adam Sandler to keep it alive. There’s little to no real drama, unless discovering that the nice vet isn’t gasp that nice after all counts as drama for you (spoiler: he’s actually still a decent and nice dude anyways). An innocuous enough film, with a great lead and a cute dog, if you’re willing to ignore the fact that nothing even vaguely exciting or dramatic happens.