If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Disinterested in kids her own age, a precious preteen girl scout from an affluent neighbourhood decides to befriend a man twice her age who mows her parents' lawn in this captivating drama from 'The Year My Voice Broke' director John Duigan. A talented director of youngsters, Duigan gets an excellent performance out of Mischa Barton in the lead role, while Sam Rockwell holds his own as the lawnmower man. Reluctant to accept her friendship because of what others may think, Rockwell is nevertheless won over by Barton's natural charm and charisma and the film becomes filled with tension from then on in. From onlookers eyeing them at a petrol station, to Rockwell touching Barton's scar at her own request, uncertainty lingers in the air as to what will be misconstrued and at what point will someone get the wrong idea about their platonic relationship and accuse Rockwell of terrible things. It is a thought-provoking film as it challenges general preconceptions out there about the inability for an older man to be friends with a younger woman with nothing else going on between them, but it is the hypocrisy of the town that they live in that is most striking here with Rockwell suspected by many of petty thievery simply because he is poor and Barton's father caring nothing about a local teenager fondling her chest because he is the son of a powerful figure in town. Not everything works here, especially how Rockwell handles a dog incident late in the piece, but it is an unexpectedly gripping ride, capped off with a magical ending.

I'm a fan of Mischa Barton and obtained this movie after some research done on the Net. First off, let me just say that the creators of THE O.C. were most definitely influenced by this. Mischa Barton in a gated community, rich girl + poor boy, and, just like at the end of this movie, at the end of THE O.C. #2 there is this shooting incident.It's also the third movie I've watched recently featuring lawnmower guys and their relationships with rich girls - the other two being CAN'T BUY ME LOVE and SUMMER CATCH. But that's just a coincidence. My first observation is very interesting. Wonder if Josh Schwarz would admit to it?As for the picture itself, great! Noticed that Mischa is forever just being Mischa, she is cute and the camera loves her, so film away, she hardly has to do much but remember her lines, and that she does. True feeling for the part is unfortunately not always evident, as is the case with THE O.C. But come on, here she was very, very young, she wasn't even allowed to see her own movie afterward due to the age restriction, and she couldn't have known what the part was really, really about. At times though, here, she is nevertheless just absolutely perfect, unbeatable, the best choice for the part. Other times she is just rambling through the lines.Very worthwhile movie, though.

This weird and improbable tale opens with a splendid overview of a newly built, upscale, gated community called Camelot, with over-sized houses miles and miles of sprinkled lawns, spotless curving streets, no trees, and a watchful guard packing a side arm. It's a phantasmagorically revolting panorama of modern life.I watched it chiefly because I'd understood that Angie Harmon has a nude scene, and so she does, but it only lasts a second and she's on screen for less than five minutes.But I was enthralled by the fey narrative that followed that bleak opening. The families are all bourgeois in their values as well as their life styles. But it's rather like "Blue Velvet" in that there are a horde of repugnant beetles and ants under all that Kentucky bluegrass that Sam Rockwell, the young and sweaty lawn man mows.The story is told principally from the point of view of ten-year-old Mischa Barton. She's magnetic. She not the kind of stunning young beauty that arouses the pedophile in every normal man. I mean, she's not Brooke Shields. But she gives a wholly natural performance, despite the sometimes fairy tale dialog that the writers have stuck her with.Barton befriends the modest, poor lawn man, Rockwell, for reasons that aren't immediately discernible. Rockwell looks the part of a poverty stricken working man. He wears sweaty clothes and lives in a tumble-down trailer somewhere in the woods. But the role he plays is constrained by his acting style. He slouches around like James Dean, and he's what some directors call, well, a "dung kicker actor," in that he seems so often to be staring down at his shoes, as if prodding a cow flop with the toe of his dirty boot. The growing bond between Rockwell and Barton is the essence of the plot and it doesn't quite clear the bar. Barton manages to convey the desperation behind her attraction, but Rockwell too often seems indifferent and even hostile. It's not entirely his fault. The script doesn't help. See "Sundays and Cybele" if you can, for an example of how to get this subtle kind of message across without weakening it.The rest of the cast is adequate but stereotyped. Barton's immaculate father takes advantage of a chance to humiliate his gardener, and he's given to jumping to faddish conclusions. Kathleen Quinlan, a fine actress, is enclosed in the iron maiden role of nervous and hypocritical mother, who allows one of the local studs to gobble her up while she prepares a salad for the back yard barbecue. Two of the local studs appear periodically to ridicule Rockwell and do Quinlan when Dad isn't around. One of them owns a hostile Doberman that attacks Rockwell, who later beats to death for insufficient reasons. I'm not sure whether the canicide was intended to show that, like everyone else, Rockwell is imperfect, or whether it was a plot device to drive Barton and Rockwell away from one another for a while. At its climax, the film falls apart.Barton is given to telling others the story of a witch, the imaginary Baba Yaga. She's not making it up. I don't know where a ten year old living on No Problem Drive in bone-dry Camelot Gardens got it, but it's an old Russian folk tale, complete with the magic comb and towel that saves the fleeing innocent victim. There are lots of versions and they're widespread throughout Europe and Asia. It's been written in Sanskrit, and it's one of the few tales that made the jump across the Siberian land bridge with the American Indians, if I remember correctly.The writers have done some research, but the movie fails to cohere, despite some gripping scenes and despite the stellar performance of young Mischa Barton, who grew up to be ravishing and problem ridden. At that, though, its deliberate pace and thoughtful camera work and editing are a vast improvement over the parade of junk now coming out of a decadent Hollywood.

"Edward Scissorhands" with added pretence, "Lawn Dogs" finds Mischa Barton playing a young girl who moves into the affluent Kentucky neighbourhood of Camelot Gardens. Director John Duigan paints this gated community, with its big houses and immaculate lawns, as a throng of smug, conceited white folk, all of whom bully, fear, exploit and prey on those too poor to live within Camelot's exclusive walls. Feeling such wrath is Trent Burns, played by Sam Rockwell, a gardener who, because he is a working class stiff, is accused of crimes, paedophilia, and subjected to much bullying."Lawn Dogs" is smooth and well acted whenever Barton and Rockwell are on screen, but many caricatures and buffoonish scenes of violence designed to push us into sympathising with Rockwell rob the film of all nuance. Duigan's aiming for "magic realism", a fairy tale plot with enchanted forests, red riding hoods, castle-like buildings and ghoulish villains, but can't quite pull it off. Still, Rockwell is always worth a watch.The film's attempts at "class warfare" range from affecting to downright insulting. While it is true that the poor are routinely scapegoated, marginalised, blamed for society's ills, ignored by the media (unless being depicted as parasitic "welfare bums") and viewed by the middle class with a mixture of fear and hatred, the film paints with such broad brush-strokes that the complexities of these issues are bulldozed. Instead the film plays like "The Elephant Man", goading us into crying over bullied outsiders.Bizarrely, the film's twin narrative arcs "contradict" one another. Barton goes through your standard "death of innocence" journey (she essentially sheds her childhood), whilst Rockwell is designed to engender audience wish fulfilment, magically being "liberated" from conditions which would ordinarily crush him in real life. Few "magic realism" films so literally collide fantasy/optimism (the adult) with realism/pessimism (in this case, localized in the child).7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.