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Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: There are those who believe empathy is the quality that separates man from beast, but what does it say that White directs his compassion exclusively toward animals? Read more
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: It's enjoyable in a dry but fervent way that most American comedies aren't. Read more
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Despite the gimmicky direction and a disappointing climax, this is a distinctive and unsettling comedy. Read more
John Hartl, Seattle Times: [Writer-director Mike White] always had a knack for writing character-revealing moments; this time he demonstrates a talent for handling actors as well. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: We're asked to laugh at her. Then we're asked to be ashamed of our laughter. It's a delicate balance, and White and his actors pull it off magnificently. Read more
Nathan Rabin, AV Club: White's gently perceptive film is a funny, poignant, emotionally honest minor-key character study about a painfully shy woman whose scary, uncertain adult life begins when her dog's happy little existence ends. Read more
Kathy Cano Murillo, Arizona Republic: The bittersweet Dog is a film that whimpers rather than barks. Read more
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: [Writer-director White] is perceptive and gentle enough a director to allow Peggy to become a dog person of tragic proportions without laughing at her. He's a humorist with a humane core. Read more
Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: White is a clever writer, and many of his best lines will sneak up on you long after you leave the theater. There's a stealthy sweetness to the movie, a desire to understand those who go their own way, that would seem to be his ultimate aim. Read more
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Much is said in little moments: The entire cast offers jots of humor and insight, from Reilly and Sarsgaard to Laura Dern as a spiny sister-in-law and Regina King as Layla, a vehemently supportive friend. Read more
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: There's a good subject buried here: The way the lives of animal lovers can be upended by the loss of a pet. Read more
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Is it possible for a movie to anthromorphize humans? Read more
Tom Long, Detroit News: Year of the Dog is a feel-good, feel-bad movie about personal choice in the face of an overwhelming world. It brings more than you expect and leaves you wondering. How extraordinarily brave. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: I mean no impertinence when I say that as a portrait of love and grief, writer-director Mike White's exceptional film Year of the Dog deserves the same admiration accorded Joan Didion's exceptional memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. Read more
Christy Lemire, Associated Press: What could have been a feel-good performance from Molly Shannon is instead delicate, poignant, and an unexpected display of dramatic mastery from an actress who's made her name with comedy. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Year of the Dog has been perfectly cast, and Shannon is a small revelation; shorn of the antic energy she has invested in her sketch characters and, given an actual character to play, she accomplishes something welcome and unexpected. Read more
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: A reality-based fairy tale of Southern California as a sun-kissed land filled with normal-looking obsessives, of whom Peggy is by far the least doctrinaire going in. Read more
Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: There's a lot of truth and beauty in Year of the Dog, and most of it radiates from the performance of Molly Shannon. Read more
David Denby, New Yorker: The movie's meaning seems to be: we're all crippled in some way, so just live with it -- celebrate it, even. That isn't satire; it's moss-brained sentiment that turns 'sensitivity' into a dimly dejected view of life. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: There's nothing wrong with ambiguity, but Year of the Dog seems more like a film that had a point of view, in some early draft, and then lost it in rewrites. Read more
Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: While some may be put off by Peggy's wild-eyed mania, and the film's broadly comic tone, Shannon makes this lost spirit strikingly sympathetic. Read more
Lou Lumenick, New York Post: A very low-key, well-acted dramedy. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's a movie in mourning, a dark comedy where we never quite see the light at the end of the tunnel. Read more
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: White's humanist account of a woman more comfortable with animals than people is another intricately crosshatched sketch in his gallery of outsiders. Read more
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Year of the Dog is an enjoyable, patchy, rambling affair, a series of bittersweet comic sketches strung together with thin wire. Read more
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: Year of the Dog is one of those quirky little movies that you marvel ever got made while being supremely grateful that it did. It's hard to even categorize. Read more
Dana Stevens, Slate: Year of the Dog asks how far we should be willing to go for the love of animals, and for that matter, for love itself. Read more
Paige Wiser, Chicago Sun-Times: Year of the Dog succeeds in drawing you in, making you look at the world from her perspective. By the end of the movie, you will recognize what kind of a person she is -- and you'll understand how she came to be that way. Read more
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: In the end, [writer-director] White settles for some unearned and unpersuasive optimism, which, in Hollywood scriptwriting, serves as shorthand for poignancy. Read more
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Neither extreme of the animal rights debate can take comfort from this take-no-prisoners comedy. Frequently disturbing but always compelling, Year of the Dog barks for attention from the right kind of audience. Read more
David Jenkins, Time Out: Though the film falters in terms of its lack of a streamlined narrative, there is no denying that it is packed to the rafters with meaty ideas and characters who are charged with a satisfying moral ambivalence. Read more
Claudia Puig, USA Today: A bittersweet dark comedy about a lonely middle-aged woman who finds that animals are the only beings she can truly rely on. Read more
John Anderson, Variety: Molly Shannon's bittersweet portrayal of its lonely canine-loving heroine, along with a passel of pups trying to steal the picture, make for a satisfyingand funny, if ironic, comedy intended for lovers of both the beast and/or sophisticated laughs. Read more
Rob Nelson, Village Voice: Shannon's richly minimal performance-a series of reactions, most ranging from deadpan to perturbed -- derives pathos from the familiarly elemental: happy, sad, bitter. Read more
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: There's an undeniable sweetness to the movie's celebration of surrendering to one's best self. Read more