A light-ish drama starring Bill Murray as Walter, a New York writer, and Naomi Watts as his friend, Iris, who is also a mentee and ex-lover. The film opens in flashback, with Walter sighting a Great Dane loose on the City’s horizon. One is reminded of the well-known stage adage: never work with animals or children, because Bing, as Apollo (Walter’s dog) steals the show with a pedigree performance. Woof!
As it transpires, Walter is actually dead (by suicide) and has left behind not only a spate of unanswered emails, wives and ex-lovers but also the Great Dane, Apollo. “What will happen to the dog?” is the central premise and oft-repeated note in this narrative — a bit like a teacher writing THEME on the blackboard and underlining it several times, just in case the class (audience) didn’t get it the first-time round.
Suffice, pets are strictly banned in Iris’s tiny, rent-controlled Greenwich Village apartment. She’s also struggling with a book — a compilation of Walter’s correspondence.
If only we had a dollar for every film about a blocked writer, we could all retire and never write again, which, ironically, would make us the plot of the next movie. Or at least give us enough cash to retire to Cannes and bathe in champagne.
Co-directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, this is an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s 2018 bestseller. All three share writing credits, delving into themes of grief, friendship and healing. Iris’s narration, in places, is so clichéd you’ll think the writers went to the Cliché Shop and asked for the Combo Special: one tortured metaphor, two lazy tropes, and a side of sentimental claptrap. The structure, too, goes a bit off-leash with imaginary scenarios between Iris, the deceased Walter and a miniature Dachshund — don’t ask.
Naomi Watts (The Watcher, Diana, Mulholland Drive) gives a studied, mousy performance as the put-upon, grieving Iris. (A lesser mortal might have told the pampered, philandering Walter to shove it right between the pages of his last manuscript.) Nonetheless, the gentle Iris is landed with the massive mutt — which becomes, literally and figuratively, no walk in the park.
The film is easy on the eye, as is Watts’s impressive performance. Murray, as ever, ambles amiably on and off screen like an old man in slippers. Not sure you can call it acting — more shumbling (that is, shuffling and mumbling, my word). One wonders if a more age-appropriate actor might have lent more credibility to the role, given the slew of young women and wives Walter leaves in his wake.
Folks! This is an inoffensive offering with a simple premise: What happens to the dog? In case you missed the point earlier. It’s likeable and not an unpleasant way to woof away a few hours.
My Rating:  Two paws out of four!
Best in Show for Bing, the Great Dane.