tomgillespie2002 It has been said that when it comes to cinema, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy can spread word-of-mouth and natural curiosity faster than most ad campaigns, propelling a film that may have flown under most people's radar to surprise success and welcome notoriety. This isn't always the case however, as Deborah Kampmeier's Hounddog proves. Following a screening at the Sundance Film Festival, the film faced protests for a scene in which Dakota Fanning's character is raped (she was 12 at the time of filming). Hounddog went onto to be a critical and box-office failure, and has since faded into obscurity. In fact, the gut- wrenching power of the hard-to-watch rape scene and the performance of Fanning are the only good things to be said about this slow- moving and cliché-ridden drama.It's the late 1950's. Lewellen (Fanning) is a precocious young girl living in rural Alabama with her deadbeat dad (David Morse), and next door to her religious disciplinarian grandmother (Piper Laurie). She spends most of her spare time performing awful renditions of her favourite Elvis Presley songs, or down at the local watering hole with her friend Buddy (Cody Hanford). The two share the odd kiss and inspect each other's private parts with fascination. We're told that Daddy is abusive, and clearly gets violent with his new girlfriend (listed as 'Stranger Lady' in the credits and played by Robin Wright). However, he is struck by lightning one night and reduced to a simpleton, becoming reliant on his tom-boy daughter and terrified she will abandon him. Lewellen's main concern is nabbing tickets for Elvis's visit to town, until a horrific attack turns her world upside down.In an attempt to capture Lewellen's poverty and the general barrenness of the Deep South setting, Kampmeier has pasted together images of rusty, decrepit vehicles parked on overgrown lawns and damp, sweaty interiors, combined with the constant chirping of crickets. It's beautifully filmed, but this kind of imagery has been used countless times before. It often feels like a foreigner's idea of Alabama, all string vests, small-town ignorance and God-fearing. You wait for the story to kick into gear, but it never does. Instead, the film seems to revel in putting Lewellen through one horrible experience after another, with seemingly no point. She seeks guidance from local snake-catcher Charles (Afemo Omilami), who teaches the girl about the blues which inspired Elvis, and the two share a few scenes in which he comes across as the clichéd wise black man. Hounddog is terrible on almost every level, but thank God for Fanning, who even outshines seasoned veterans like Morse and Wright.

punishmentpark Dakota Fanning. I haven't seen much with her in it, but she was pretty good in Kelly Reichardt's 'Night moves'. There, she played a much more sober role than in this one, and it seemed befitting. Here, she is quite disappointing; some provocative dancing, some mediocre singing, a few teen tantrums and some awful screaming (the scene in which David Morse joins in with the screaming is truly awful). Never did she convince me of the pain and anguish Lewellen was in.The premise is relatively promising, but the story quickly becomes inane and boring. Seldom do I wish to turn off a movie, but 'Hounddog' accomplished that. The dialogues range from nothing special to truly annoying (although I was unable to understand all of them, due to the lack of subtitles), and really none of the acting was impressive, which also had much to do with the poor direction, I'm sure. There are some pretty pictures of the American South to look at, but they amount to very little here.Uninspired is the key word here, even if the story is all about being truly inspired (through blues music)... It's almost shocking to learn that the director is a prominent name in the academic world.2 out of 10.

postalinvt So, here I am, almost ten years after the fact, writing a review. I am a big fan of miss Fannings and I decided to see this film when I read about it on Amazon just recently. I had never heard of it before and I shouldn't be surprised after seeing the opening weekend box office take.Not withstanding all the criticism you will read on this site you MUST see this movie if you admire the acting skill of Dakota Fanning. I watched Man on fire to see Denzel and fell in love with a little girl! The so-called "rape" scene consists of a shot of Dakota from the shoulders up and it made me want to cry; She's just that expressive. The other moment of great acting I notice was her singing the blues in the barn (nice voice). Before the rape OK but not touching my heart; After the rape, a completely different experience! How can any human without decades of life experience know how to do that?I believe she would have, and should have, won awards for this film had it been given any kind of support. Give yourself a treat and watch this.

Shane Paterson Just watched this dreck, forcing myself to persist through its blessed end (more blessed had Lewellen been fatally bitten by a rattler as she waltzed away). The good news is that the film's well shot and somewhat evocative of the South, albeit with typical stereotypes firmly in place. Lots of heavy-handed symbolism, too, the most obvious being the snakes.Also, most of the actors are top-notch, though they've all been better than in this morass, likely thanks to superior scripting and directing in other properties. David Morse is always great and stands out here for maintaining a little integrity within the story's confines; actually, I think he'd make a great "Simple Jack" if the producers of "Tropic Thunder" decide to greenlight that project. Piper Laurie is good, too, though her role's small and one-dimensional. Granoldo Frazier's a very appealing screen presence with great gravitas despite his role being largely a cliché, the so-called 'Magic Negro' visible in a plethora of films running the gamut from "The Shining" to "The Toy" (not a hallmark of BAD films, necessarily -- many such films are very good -- but undeniably a stock cliché so venerable that if you're going to add to the subgenre you'd better make it a good one).Dakota Fanning is hard to take here. I remember being taken aback by her competence as an actor in earlier films, and NOT just in light of her extreme youth. But in "War Of The Worlds" she was just terminally annoying. To be fair, any little kid and most adults facing invasion by aliens that nasty would probably spend a good deal of the time screaming and collapsing into gibbering heaps of protoplasm, but it wasn't the situational reactions of her character that bothered me so much as a very tangible sense that, somehow, throughout she's just a little too CONSCIOUS that she's acting, and it shows. It seemed, to me, that she's basically screaming with every line and every look "LOOK! I'm an ACTOR! And I'm a REALLY GOOD ONE!!" In this "Hounddog" fiasco I get exactly the same feeling, and it both distracts and undermines the film, or WOULD undermine the film if the film wasn't flawed fatally from the outset. Actually, I thought that young Cody Hanford, as Buddy, was far more convincing and natural in his role and how he played it.The film is badly directed. The story's pretty stultifying, anyway. There're a few places where things aren't too clear; the one that had me most adrift was when Robin Wright Penn's character has her car towed and leaves. There're some true Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moments, too, like the caretaker having Big Mama Thornton ensconced in his hayloft and apparently being familiar with the process for making snake antivenin from scratch (okay, that one's slightly more plausible).I'm a big-time Elvis fan and student of the man's career and so, of course, this film's LOADS of fun for me, or would be if I actually ENJOYED running across rampant and unnecessary inaccuracies. This sort of thing is standard in film but in this case you're talking about a man whose OBSCURE songs are familiar only to a few MILLION and the errors in this film were totally avoidable; correcting them wouldn't at all have diminished the integrity of the piece. First, I find it really, really hard to believe that Lewellen, of all people, would blissfully ignore the fact that the volume was turned down on Elvis during his controversial airing of "Hound Dog" on Milton Berle's TV show and even harder to believe that she'd turn her back to the silent screen while performing her imitation (an imitation based on that very broadcast). Okay, cinematic license but, still... Regardless, given that even the richest families in the '50s didn't have VCRs or Tivo, this scene sets the date as June 5, 1956. It's hard to figure what time-traveling magic allows Lewellen to buy a copy of "Peace In The Valley" (that Elvis recorded in January, 1957) and go even further into the future to learn the lyrics to Elvis' 1961 movie song "Can't Help Falling In Love." Just to add to the fun, when the big night of Elvis' show arrives he can be heard singing "Love Me Tender" with the '70s arrangement, another totally unnecessary and conscious goof. Further, and here I realize that artistic license trumps all, Elvis didn't play anywhere in Alabama during 1956 (or 1957); his final concert in the state, until he returned on tour in September of 1970, was in Montgomery on December 3, 1955. The same error's present in "Heart Of Dixie." Still, these anachronisms are not as bad as the execrable "Cadillac Records," a nicely shot and dressed film with great music and great acting that falsely and terribly accuses a real living (well, dead, now) person of outright murder and, admittedly not quite as bad, shows Elvis in 1956 film footage dubbed to a 1969 performance of "My Babe" on TV and shows jail-bound Chuck Berry looking at (if I recall correctly) Army footage of Elvis, proclaiming something about this being the new King, and all of this AFTER the Rolling Stones and Beach Boys entered the narrative, leading me to the obvious conclusion that Elvis Presley, influenced by the Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, and that famed gunslinger Little Walter, didn't begin his professional rise until about 1968 or 1969.People, when you insert one of the most famous and scrutinized people in HISTORY into your films, be ready for some nitpicking. Do it well and we'll forgive you. Do it badly, or in a bad film (like this one), and we'll call you on it.In the end, the only part of this film worth a damn was in the trailer: Elvis (impersonator Ryan Pelton, who manages a good likeness) blowing the kiss to Lewellen. That was pretty cool.