The Movie
Let's get something straight right off the top: this movie is about Chelsea the Shih Tzu the same way Michael Moore's films are about his microphone. The cute little canine is more prop than character, as director Gayle Kirschenbaum slaps a camera on its back and attempts to use her dog to bait poor defenseless guys into conversations that start with such subtle flirtations as "Are you single?" The female Cyrano, she is not. Kirschenbaum is looking for a man, and looking hard, and the only thing that can stop her is a major terrorist attack.

In the midst of her search for companionship, not only for herself but for her dog, 9/11 happens, and she has to change her film around, from the self-centered slice of single female New Yorker life it was to a movie about caring and what the love of a fuzzy little dog can do for a person. Admittedly, this part is touching, but after you've seen what she's all about to start the film, it feels a bit inauthentic. That's unfortunate, considering the documentary goldmine she stumbled into, and the events she's a part of.

Like the stereotypical single woman with a dog, Kirschenbaum turns her pet into animal offspring, and then in turn, acts as though their "child" is something special. Everyone's seen a cute dog (hell, my Schnoodle Mattingly is downright adorable), so to listen to her fawn over her Shih Tzu and talk as if the dog is a human borders on nauseating. When she talks about not having time for a job because she has to dress her dog for the snow, I had to hold back great vengeance and furious anger. I know I act the same way in private with my dog, but I don't set up a tripod when I do it and subject defenseless DVD reviewers to it.

I have one question after watching this film, and it has nothing to do with the dog. How did Kirschenbaum connect with world-renown documentarian Albert Maysles, who gives her advice on her film in an early scene? Whenever I see an unknown filmmaker with access to a legend get their film made, the nepotism alert sounds and makes me wonder what the deal is. No matter how I try, it's hard to keep that from coloring my opinion of her. If she had explained it a bit in the film, I would have been more comfortable in watching this movie. At least it was short, clocking in at just over a half-hour.

The DVD
One standard keepcase and one standard one-sided DVD make up this package. The disc has a static full-frame main menu that opens with an animated transition and offers options to play the 36-minute short-film, view the special features and select chapters. The disc has no language options, subtitles or closed captioning.

The Quality
The camera-work, especially the footage from the puppy-mounted camera, isn't particularly good, and often risks causing motion sickness. Viewing this on a big-screen TV isn't a suggested activity. Much of the film has excessive grain, and some of the evening shots have a Blair Witch feel. The color is a bit dull, and most of the movie looks like a typical home movie, without much detail in the full-frame transfer.

The sound, presented in a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, is decent, without anything that stands out. The dialogue is clean, and the music is strong, but this is a low-budget flick, and the soundfield is entirely center-focused.

The Extras
The biggest extra is the director's cut of the film, which runs 15 minutes longer than the version that was seen on HBO. Adding in more of the media appearances Kirschenbaum and her dog made and more details about Chelsea's adventures, the director's cut makes it obvious where Kirschenbaum saw this film going originally, as there's way more about the dog and the movie than the 9/11 material.

Eight text questions for the director are followed by video answers that are taken from Q&A footage and an interview. These can be viewed individually or as a group. If you care about the film, the info will be interesting. The same goes for audience reaction footage, which Kirschenbaum freely admits are only the positive ones.

A six-minute interview with Maysles, conducted by the director, is worth watching simply because it's Maysles. The interview was conducted after he watched the finished film, so he's got an informed perspective. The extras wrap up with a boring video of the film's theme song, "A Dog's Life," performed by Dave's True Story.

The Bottom Line
Short and less than impressive in content and design, A Dog's Life is a vanity project that gets its legs from the cuteness of its canine star. Its human star is far less interesting, but unfortunately, unlike the dog, she speaks. The DVD looks and sounds as one might expect from a low-budget documentary, and the extras are relatively good, but it's still going to be just the extreme dog lovers out there who get into this movie.

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*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.