Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

I Love You, Man

I Love You, Man. John Hamburg, 2009.
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Edition screened: Paramount DVD, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 105 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.

I Love You, Man isn’t a one-note song, as it actually hammers away at two jokes. The structural joke – that Paul Rudd has no friends – passes the viewer’s time in a familiar tedious way. The laugh-bag joke, Rudd’s endless failure to improvise nicknames and catchphrases, is abysmally unfunny and just doesn’t stop. Each gag begins when, for example, Rudd calls a hamburger a burger-ino, realizes it isn’t funny, and allows the quip to fizzle out. The other characters keep stone faces and the silent humiliation is the punchline. I kept imaging that Ben Stiller’s delivery might offer just the right embarrassed stammer, but I doubt that anyone could make this bit funny a fourth time, not to mention every 30 seconds in a movie.

I offer this observation because a joke-to-joke assessment of the gag, its failure on both levels, and the associated sympathy I felt for the generally likable actors, formed a lifeline that got me through much, but not all, of the film. There is no salve palliating enough nor drink strong enough to mediate between suicidal thoughts and the Rush singalong in Jason Segel’s basement.

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