Dog Days

A varied group of people living in and around Los Angeles have various adventures with canine companions, eventually coming together at a pet shelter benefit. Directed by Ken Marino and written by Elissa Matsueda and Erica Oyama, the movie is a bit of a shaggy dog itself, wandering hither and yon almost at random. Marino’s direction is haphazard—he has trouble even matching shots—but he gets sincere performances from his large (and largely unfamiliar) cast, with top honors going to Vanessa Hudgens as a coffee-bar barista, Eva Longoria and Rob Corddry as over-eager adoptive parents, and Ron Cephas Jones and Finn Wolfhard as a lonely retired professor and his pizza delivery boy. The movie’s heart is in the right place, and like a good doggie we forgive it if it doesn’t always know what it’s doing.