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Reviews
Against Type (2006)
Very Bad
Wow. Can you say amateur? This apology for a pilot (available free online) was probably the poorest excuse for entertainment I had seen ever. I actually didn't mind the plot, to be honest. But it was nothing original (about a fitness instructor and his teen daughter, he is asked to become the trainer to a movie star who his daughter crushes on) nor particularly funny. I liked Roland Kickinger, but the acting from the girl was the sort of over-the-top style you see in amateur drama productions. Not to mention she had some terrible lines ("Sometimes I don't know who's raising who!"). The whole thing had the feel of a high school media class assignment, except I get the feeling that a bunch of 13-year-olds with an old camcorder could have done a better job than whoever was responsible for this.
Hounddog (2007)
Saw this at Santa Barbara
The crappy writing has probably been covered. One gets the feeling that Lewellen (Dakota's character) will go on to abuse others. Already she abuses mean to Buddy and Grasshopper. It's like Kampmeier - she too seems to be perpetrating the abuse cycle by using these children to act out all these sexual scenes. It reeks of exploitation, but ironically, the rape scene and Dakota's scenes probably less than all the others. Multiple underwear/undress images of all the children. The bad character (and rapist), Wooden's Boy, was just omically one-dimensional (as was the father, now I consider it). He didn't do anything, just was mean, then raped the girl. A few things don't seem to follow on with each other. There were a lot of scenes cut. Disgustingly, and although I tried not to think about it, Lewellen was a rather horrible character, even portrayed at times as deserving of the abuse, 'asking for it'. Sickening. It didn't seem like a rape victim advocacy movie. I think they just tried to bring that in after the fact. Oh, and exploitation aside - it was still bad. The audience didn't like it and I think there were even some walkouts.