A Brief Review: Fido

This review comes a little bit late but hopefully can help inform your dvd purchases. As the titles says, this is a brief review and many, if not all of my points, will not be developed in any detail. If there are statements that are felt to need clarification, please feel free to post a comment and I will respond.

Andrew Currie's satiric zombie film juxtaposes the visual and social norms of the 50's American Dream with the gore and violence of the 80's zombie film. It's an entertaining if not obvious piece of work.

Nothing is obvious about the concept, but it's execution does little to subvert the targets of ridicule. It opens with a parody of a 50's educational/propoganda film, which sets not only the tone of the film but the extent of it's satire. It moves from there into a typical plot about a family torn by gender roles and social stasis. This is territory that has been better developed, and with more purpose, elsewhere. In Fido, it is the framework on which to hang dull sight gags and genre parody. For the first two acts, it actually works to a point. The third and final act however reduces the film into cliche. Which is shame. I would think that there were ways to resolve the story presented without resorting to such an unsatisfying end.

What saves Fido from being simply boring is the acting. Billy Connolly, Carrie Anne Moss and Tim Blake Nelson are all very good here, obviously enjoying their roles. The only weak player here is K'Sun Ray, who plays the lead, Timmy Robinson. This is no fault of the actor or the director, but simply a fact of child actors; they can rarely act. His rigid performance hurts the film, but it's not fatal.

Overall, Fido is a competently made film. Currie, while not a great director, knows the current rule book well enough to keep things moving forward with clarity. Fido was released in Canada independent of its US release (which is scheduled for later this year). I don't understand this decision by Lions Gate. If they wanted to bury the film, why buy it? If Fido was released simultaneously in the US and Canada, it could take advantage of a larger marketing budget. As it was, the Canadian promotion was virtually limited to a really ugly poster design.

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