Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Bob 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.

doctorsmoothlove Hounddog is a movie about many things people (including the author), love to hate about the Old South. The director, Deborah Kampmeier, resorts to cliché after cliché to tell her half-baked story that I'll get mentioning in a few lines. She set the story in the south for no plot necessary reason, and layers our expectations with even more expectations. All of the young white adults are pitiable, uneducated characters who have no control over their lives. The old one is a hard-lined Christian nut, and the black people are oppressed yet compassionate because they are black. This story's only noteworthy player is Fanning's character Lewellen. She is a preteen girl, admittedly a caricature herself, who was fortunately played by someone who delights the audience with her rendition of Scout Finch.She resides with her alcoholic father and enjoys swimming in the river and Elvis LPs. She has to move in with her strict grandmother when a cartoon thunderbolt strikes her father while he is mowing the lawn. Seriously, this happens for no reason and demonstrates the film's low budget. The CG effect is laughably obvious.Lewellen is in the summer before physical womanhood. She has as much fun playing dress up as she does offering boys kisses for peeks at their penises. She is totally unaware of how much of a woman she is going to be. The director plays on her innocence and includes a scene of particular cruelty made worse by our attachment to Lewellen as enhanced by Fanning's accent and method acting.Lewellen wakes up one morning and is greeted by a lascivious milkman. The poor guy has enough pimples to fit the ugly never-going-to-have-a-girlfriend stereotype you forgot that you had. You probably forgot about it because you aren't used to directors pigeonholing their audiences into such obvious setups.The milkman entices Lewellen with the promise that he will give her tickets to an Elvis concert. He meets her in a barn and asks her to strip and perform "Hound Dog," after which he rapes her. The scene is framed in such a way that we don't see him committing the act. It is not intended to be exploitative. The camera moves over her anguished face and her hand is gouged on a nail. The blood flows from her hand so you can see the coming adulthood metaphor in case the rape wasn't sufficient.Like the lightning bolt, the rape scene isn't required. It's a slap in the face to the audience that has been encouraged to grow attached to the character. I'm not offended by the rape itself, even given the age of the victim. I'm angry that the director uses it as an attempt to resuscitate her story. This story doesn't merit putting us through it. Lewellen does get better with the help of the token black characters, and the film finally ends.Hounddog was a critical and commercial failure and may have caused the end to Kampmeier's carrier. Fanning's portrayal of Lewellen is worth watching, especially the visceral way she interprets the trauma of the rape. It doesn't mean you should watch movie, but it may provide a director with a glimpse into her range for a horror or thriller.

drpakmanrains It is rare that I rent a movie on Netflix and give it one star. And even one star is generous, as this is a slow slow slow paced film trying to be artsy and show the 50's or early 60's south as it was before air conditioning and Civil Rights breakthroughs. It has almost no story, dull characters, and accomplishes very little. The hour and 39 minutes seemed like an eternity. I was waiting for the pimply youth who raped Dakota Fanning to get some comeuppance, but even that didn't really happen. This film was badly written, acted, and directed despite a good cast. Dakota Fanning was not at her best, but compared to the rest of the cast, except for her same age little boy friend, she was the only one with a shred of believability. Piper Laurie reprises her 1976 role in Carrie. Robin Wright Penn and David Morse are wasted in empty performances. I can't believe that anyone could find this movie important or worth the time.

meeza HOUNDDOG(In the style of Elvis' hit song "Hound Dog")You ain't nothing but a "Hounddog" Stinking all the time You ain't nothing but a "Houndog" Boring all the time Well, you ain't caught a "love it" And you ain't no movie friend of mineWell they said you were high classed (did they?) Well that was just a lie Well they said you had no plot class Well that was not a lie You ain't never caught a viewer And you ain't no friend of fine (Song over)Let's just say that the awful southern-themed "Hounddog" had no bark and no bite. The film stars Dakota Fanning as Lewellen, a tween southern girl in the 50's who obsesses for Elvis music. Dakota was not north or south in her mediocre performance as Lewellen; even though I was hoping Ms. Fanning would muzzle the "Hound Dog" after her 100th rendition of Elvis' classic song. Lewellen's father is an idiotic redneck who was struck by lightning, a feeling I was hoping would happen to the film screen as I was watching David Morse's repugnant performance as Daddy. Her grandmother Grammie (portrayed stupidly by Piper Laurie) is a prejudiced controlling woman whose pathetic behaviors made me want to hope that this grandma would get run over by a reindeer, or any deer for that matter. What in the world made the talented Robin Wright Penn get involved in this atrocious film playing a hideous Stranger Lady and also serving as Executive Producer? It was the wrong Pennmanship for the former Mrs. Sean Penn. Writer-Director Deborah Kampmeier's disturbing and flat film-making pulled in a Non-Oscar Kampmeier Weiner disgraceful status. "Hounddog" has been labeled as the Dakota Fanning rape movie, but I think it's the viewers of this film which were really victimized with a dreadful cinematic assault. *Failure

NaughtyTempleton This was a decent movie, but I think Deborah Kampmeier's symbolism got lost in translation.I really enjoy watching Dakota Fanning, but was unsure about seeing this film due to the highly publicized rape scene. Once I read the reviews that stated the rape scene was not graphic, I decided to go ahead and see it.The story is okay. It's nothing special and has been done before....Bastard out of Carolina comes to mind when watching this film (and Bastard was a much better film). You basically have a young girl (Lewellen) who pretty much seems to run around in the deep south. Her family doesn't seem to have money, her father is an alcoholic and has a new girlfriend who he is beating (you later find out that his girlfriend is Lewellen's aunt), she has a grandmother who seems to have some sort of physical custody and is a stereotyped holy roller, who thinks everything is a sin, etc. Lewellen is 12 and is obviously curious about sex; she has a little boyfriend and trades a kiss to see his "thing." Interestingly enough, I have read reviews that state Lewellen's character is overly sexual and a spoiled brat. Somehow, I do not get this from Fanning's portrayal. She just seemed like a little girl who was comfortable in her body, but not trying to be sexual.Lewellen is obsessed with Elvis and I think part of the point of the movie was that she uses Elvis' music to find her own voice, but as I said before....I don't feel this translated well. Lewellen does get raped; Dakota did not play the scene well, which I actually consider a good thing since she shouldn't really know how to act a scene like that out. I have also read reviews that Lewellen's character "asked for it" and I don't see that either....she was simply a naive child who was taken advantage of by a teenage boy (played by Christoph Sanders, who is quite creepy in the role).In the "Making of" feature on the DVD, Kampmeier talks about this being a coming of age story and all the snakes in the film symbolizing the church's oppression. To me, that was far fetched. I didn't really feel it was a coming of age story....as far as the symbolism, what lost me was after Lewellen is raped, she more or less withdraws into herself and stays in bed half asleep. All of these snakes are seen slithering and coiling on her (her imagination). The child is going to withdraw and feel terrible after a rape and the church has nothing to do with it.I feel there were things missing from the movie as well....I am not sure if it was edited before DVD release or not, so maybe the flow would have been better before editing. I would be interested in seeing an uncut version if one exists.