Cheer and moaning in L.A.

How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog

Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Japanese title: Butai Yori, Sutekina Seikatsu
Director: Michael Kalesniko
Running time: 98 minutes
Language: English
Opens Dec. 11

[See Japan Times movie listings]

Kenneth Branagh once said in a movie many years back: "There is no such thing as grown-ups, they're only children with money."

Now Branagh is playing just the sort of dastardly kind of grown-up he once criticized, and with obvious relish, in "How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog." As an immature, snide British-American playwright named Peter McGowan, Branagh excels in sarcastic rejoinders and mean-minded bons mots. Whining and complaining dribbles constantly from his mouth like pureed spinach from the spoon of a colicky 2-year-old.

If you're looking for a thoroughly unpleasant specimen of middle-aged manhood gone sour, the search ends right here: "How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog" will have you fighting back the urge to march up to the screen and flatten Peter's nose with one good jab from the left. In fact, the title is downright misleading unless director Michael Kalesniko intended the dog to mean Peter. Let's leave the dog alone; the playwright definitely has more problems.