Man Bites Dog - Comments & Tips

The film has moments of utter brilliance, with the guerrilla filmmaking style perfectly complementing Benoît Poelvoorde''s performance, which crashes back and forth between appropriately outrageous and chillingly subtle. However, by the time you reach the end, you feel empty, not because of the film''s lack of heart, but it''s unwise lack of logic and restraint.

An utterly bonkers watch that, somehow, really keeps a grip on you. This is one of those films that goes from a full laugh to a grim sense of foreboding and back again

Here the real and the disturbing meet the absurd comedy, and the fake documentary style in black and white matches this dark satire. The movie has many graphic scenes of extreme violence and impact, but the story, which starts from the bizarre, ends up taking too many turns, and keeps repeating itself, trying to reinforce the satirical element all the time through the main character, who ends up plunging headlong into exaggeration and caricature, leaving the movie extremely boring.

it's boringly bad, I found myself wanting to go to sleep

Like giving a standup eulogy at a midnight funeral, Man Bites Dog is a comedy that is dark as hell. What we have here is a Belgian mockumentary following a local criminal as he murders, rapes and pillages his way around town. It's a low budget film made by film students that took off in ways no one could've predicted. Made in 1992, Man Bites Dog saw its limited theatrical / festival release blossom into a national and then international success. It was even screened at the Cannes film festival that year, where it snagged a Critics Prize and Young Filmmaker Award. Man Bites Dog isn't for every one. Even for me, a viewer with thicker skin than most, there was one scene where I felt they'd gone too far. But if you like your comedy like I like my coffee (hella black) and you don't mind young filmmakers pushing the envelope too far at times, then this comedy deserves your attention.

The original title of the film is C''est arrivé près de chez vous.

Running contender for weirdest/depraved documentary-style movie out there but no animals were fucked to death during the making of this movie, so that title still goes to ''Pink Flamingos''. Nonetheless, interesting and disturbing at times... in a fun way?