This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Blistering performances.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It should be clear that 'Dog Days of Summer' is not a formulaic film crafted for box office success. It is an independently produced film often compared to 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' -- whose screenplay Paramount bought but then allowed to lapse and Disney bought, reworked, filmed, and reworked more before its release, earning $8.4 million on a $19 million budget.But the comparison is based on two young boys having significant leading roles and the use of mysticism in the screenplay. Whereas 'Something Wicked' maintained a level of mysticism throughout, 'Dog Days' begins in total realism and ends in total mysticism without revealing whether its central character, Eli Cottonmouth, has mystic powers. It also eliminates any family-friendly audience draw by eliminating one of its young leads.To producer/director Mark Freiburger, it's the story of a man going back to rediscover the faith of childhood before it's too late – not faith in God, but faith in humanity, that people are good and just. Jaded viewers will be unable to see this quest, convinced that, to a child, ignorance is bliss that the filmmakers mistook for faith.

In the "making of" for DOG DAYS OF SUMMER--which is officially titled DOG DAYS OF SUMMER: IN THE DARK ROOM--first-time feature producer\director Mark Freiburger notes that he came up with the initial idea for this story while watching his sister's boyfriend play baseball for the Edenton Steamers team in Edenton, NC while he himself was still in high school. Upon graduation from North County School of the Arts film school, Mark and his cohorts from college made a beeline to what Mark describes as "the town that time forgot" to film their revised update to Mark Twain's 1899 novella, THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG. (Though Twain is NOT credited or acknowledged in this film or its "making of," if the writers are not familiar with this story, then the similarities between film and book are among the darnedest coincidences in the history of art. Speaking of which, the movie's "big reveal" is a total "borrowing" from the climactic scene of Nathaniel Hawthorne's great American novel, THE SCARLET LETTER.) Derivative or not, a flashback to boyhood by film narrator Phil Walden (Thoreau's WALDEN POND: the life idyllic, get it?) comprises the bulk of DOG DAYS OF SUMMER, beginning with a Steamers victory game vignette. But fans of the national pastime will be disappointed to discover that this is DOG DAYS last visit to the ball diamond. The only remaining baseball references are a brutal beating with ball bats by three of the players shown earlier, and young Phil's subsequent nightmare that his baseball star\juvenile thug brother may have beaten his missing girlfriend to death in similar fashion. While a better-than-average directorial debut, DOG DAYS is unlikely to appeal to baseball fans based on its diamond action.

Coming of age memory tale concerning a man who returns to his home town before it's flooded for a power project in order to try to come to terms with the past. He remembers back to the summer when a mysterious stranger comes to town and forced him to grow up and the town to see itself for what it was. It's magical realism of the sort that Ray Bradbury or the Twilight Zone did so well. Here its done well but unfortunately it stretched to probably twice the length it should be. I know that had the film been shorter it would never have gone anywhere but at the same time I don't really think that this works as well as long as it is. More so with the several of the dark turns happening with no real pay off including one death, the one that ends our hero's childhood, happening before we simply move to the next thing. I'm sure that the build up was supposed to make up for it, but for me it just sort of fell flat. I kind of felt the same way that the people seeing the finished model that Cottonmouth makes feel. Worth a look but I'd wait for cable.

We live in eastern NC and saw this movie at the theater. What a special film! I heard the director say that this was his first film but it sure did not seem like that. He pulled a great performance out of the child actors and you could tell that Will Patton (one of our favorites) really brought his 'A' game. This movie is a really special coming of age film that really had us thinking.A great message... and interesting story...It kind of reminded us of Ray Bradbury story... almost like Dandelion Wine... More than anything, it captured the laid back pace of a small southern town. This is a great 1st film.