Opens September 24, 1999

As one of the characters in Dog Park warns, we're all part of a fragile Dating Chain, a romantic ecosystem whose balance can be disrupted by the slightest ripple. A break up, a missed opportunity to find Mr. or Miss Right -- these are the sorts of things that destroy the chain's solidity.

This quirky philosophy is but one of many viewpoints set forth by Kids In The Hall alumnus Bruce McCulloch in his first outing as a big-screen helmer. Unfortunately, none of biting wit or skewed insight McCulloch brought to Kids seems to have made the journey with him, and the result is a bland outing that only scratches the surface of his talent.

As the story takes off, we meet earnest, downtrodden Andy played with eager Mr. Nice Guy appeal by Luke Wilson. Poor Andy has just been dumped by his mamby-pamby girlfriend Cheryl (Kathleen Robertson), who has moved in with Trevor (Gordon Curie), a loutish punk. To make matters worse, Andy doesn't even get to keep his dog Mogley and the poor pup ends up in doggy therapy because of all the torrid sex he has seen at Trevor's place. After that, it's joint doggy custody all the way.

In the midst of this crisis, Andy meets and immediately falls for a children's TV show host named Lorna, who is brought to life in a wonderfully comic turn by Natasha Henstridge. Lorna too has just been burned by her beau, who it turns out just happens to be Trevor. Small world, ain't it? From that point, Andy and Lorna grapple with the vicissitudes of romance. Lorna resists Andy's advances, tossing the roses he has sent into the garbage then sitting at home alone with her dysfunctional dog Peanut. As for Andy, he mopes about like a lost puppy (the dog motif is strong here), even after his co-worker Jeri (Janeane Garofalo, solid as ever) suggests that he go it alone for awhile. He doesn't, eventually ending up -- albeit briefly -- with a bubbly but vacuous nutritionist (Kristin Lehman) whose idea of a celebration is the fact that they have had sex fifty times.

Aside from the amusing dog park backdrop, all this is pretty standard storytelling -- the old boy loses girl, boy gets girl motif -- and that is what makes it so disappointing. A word of warning to Kids in the Hall fans: Don't expect the bizarre characters and situations that made Brain Candy such a wild ride. You won't find them here. If anything, McCulloch is so earnest that he has purposely restrained himself, trying to make a mainstream romantic comedy when he is much better suited to deadpan weirdness.

Luckily, there are a few inspired moments of the latter. The best scenes are those with either McCulloch or Mark McKinney, a fellow Kids alum, who plays Mogley's dog shrink with delightfully wild abandon. It seems that only McCulloch and McKinney are capable of the insight and delivery needed to pull off this material, leaving most of the humor to fall flat in the mouths of the other actors.

A lot of what is here feels like it would be more at home in sketch comedy and, while McCulloch has crafted a cohesive story line, the journey just doesn't reel us in. It is at best momentarily amusing and at worst appallingly dull. Still, McCulloch fans may still find enough to appreciate here, especially with the overt paeans to several of McCulloch's old Kids sketches including The Night I Connected With My Dog and The Bicycle Thief. These tidbits, however, are not enough to save a film that needs to be more over-the-top to really capture McCulloch's unique absurdist perspective.