Dog Park

The directorial debut from "Kid in the Hall" Bruce McCulloch didn't do much better in limited release, probably because it's difficult while standing in front of a theater boxoffice looking at posters and the night's schedule while your date makes impatient little clicking sounds to differentiate under pressure between something like this and such egregious time-wastage as Down to You. Which is too bad, because after an initial feeling that all the characters were trying a little to hard to be casually glib, this one grew on me.

Luke Wilson plays recently broke-up Andy, who's still fighting for custody of his dog with Cheryl (Kathleen Robertson, from "90210"), who's now living with Trevor (from the same telegenic ZIP), who used to date Lorna (Natasha Henstridge), whose best friend Rachel (Amie Carey -- "Chicago Hope") is having an affair with Jeff (McCulloch), who's living with Jeri (Janeane Garofalo), who set Luke up with ninja-wench Kieran (TV actress Kristin Lehman). Sounds like the Old Testament, except for Frisbee, since they all walk their pets in the same acreage and frequent the same canine analyst, Dr. Cavan (who has one of the strangest resume threads in filmdom: playing priests in movie spinoffs of "Saturday Night Live" sketches).

What sets Dog Park above most talk-intensive romantic comedies is the relatively realistic behavior of its characters (realistic for intelligent, well-spoken people, anyway). For the most part pleasantly low-keyed -- Wilson is the epitome of contemporary Gary Cooperism, and it's interesting seeing a defanged Garofalo in more easygoing temperament than her usual baby-eating guise -- it still provides some very funny scenes, such as when Cheryl and Trevor debate whether they're going to go out for dinner or have sex first, as well as offering the most hilarious inadvertent answering-machine message in memory. B

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