When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Eldorado starts out as a quirky, low key comedy along the lines of Jim Jarmusch (Night on Earth, Down by Law). Perhaps slow and uneventful by some people's tastes, but pretty humorous if you let the absurdity soak in. The story is about a couple of unlikely travel buddies who embark on a cross-Belgian roadtrip, alternately showcasing the gorgeous countryside and the bizarre characters they encounter.But as you can guess by my title, for me and I believe for most American audiences, the film was upstaged by an unsettling sideplot about a dog being brutally killed. After watching the movie, I immediately googled the director trying to figure out why he would include this terrible juxtaposition in an otherwise playful film. You're not going to like what I learned.According to an interview, this director's hallmark is to use a dog in his films. In this case he decided to use a dead dog. It was not intended as a major plot point but merely to express the contradictions in humans. In the scene, one character says and does something absolutely vile, but (as the director says in the interview) we are supposed to excuse him because he later shows that he is just human because he had a dog once.Um. No. Perhaps blame it on a trans-Atlantic difference in how we love our dogs, but most civilized Americans will not, under any circumstances, excuse or condone the idea of a dog being tied up, thrown over a bridge, and left to die whimpering.That's what my title refers to. Immediately I was so sickened by that scene and the characters' blasé reactions, that I lost all respect and empathy for the lot of them. Ultimately, after watching an 85 minute film, I was left wondering why I should care about anyone in the story. Of course this was not the director's intent; I suppose we were supposed to take the jarring scene more in stride. If you're a dog lover, or even a casual fan of animals, I guarantee you'll be very put off by the unnecessary brutality of that scene. I sure hope they didn't use a real dog (though it looked like they did).

The picture was a Belgian winner at Cannes as Best European Film Director's Fortnight, and I picked it up packaged as part of an 'Own the Film Movement Series'. Though there are some terrific foreign films, this one did not leave me impressed. It takes on the guise of a road film, after Yvan (Bouli Lanners) agrees to take Didier (Fabrice Adde) back to his parents' home, this after the recovering addict is found burglarizing Yvan's house. There are some unconventional characters that the pair come across along the way, but in it's attempt to be quirky, these chance encounters seem to be more contrived than accidental. The one scene that's played for poignancy involves Didier's mother, longing for some semblance of an emotional attachment to her son, but thwarted by an off screen husband who has no use for his shiftless son. Yvan conveys a rare insight into familial relationships that he imparts to his fellow traveler, while insisting they tend to an overgrown garden of weeds. This appears to be what's at the heart of the story, as Yvan despairs over the loss of his own younger brother, and now has no one left to call family. For the viewer, one is left to make what one will with the way the story ends, as there is no resolution in the traditional sense. If seen in the company of others, there will no doubt be an endless supply of possible explanations for how the story ends, or continues as it were.

I could call the movie a disappointment except that after about 20 minutes I didn't have high hopes for it. I could see that it was following the basic arc of "Midnight Cowboy" or "Central Station": one lonely, marginalized character tries to take advantage of another, then they end up forced to depend on each other on a quixotic quest through a desolate landscape toward an illusory goal of warmth and safety. But "Midnight Cowboy" was a great film, and "Central Station" was worthwhile. There is almost nothing of lasting interest in this movie either inside or outside the two characters. (The scenes at Didier's parents' house are an exception.) There are not only one, but two conversations that are literally of the "Yes. No. Yes. No" form, which are not particularly amusing, suggesting instead that the writer had nothing much to say. The random wackiness that he occasionally attempts to pump into the action is a poor substitute because there is no follow-through. Yvan gets his hair taped to the ceiling of his car to keep himself awake, but later he crashes, without any even cursory shot to show us whether the tape gave way, his hair was pulled out, or he fell asleep still attached to that ceiling. And though the car goes off the road and drives through trees, it reveals itself as magically unharmed when a nudist appears from nowhere to tow it and give them directions, then disappears from the action. A dog is dropped from a bridge, crushing the roof of a car, but the ceiling is intact when we see it immediately thereafter.This lack of consistency and consequence compromises the character development that is supposed to occur as well. Yvan, who is supposed to be demonstrating a growing feeling of responsibility to assuage his guilt for not being present for his family in the past, abandons his plan to take the suffering dog to a veterinarian. (Why? How expensive could it be to have a dog put to sleep by even a private vet, let alone a shelter, and has Yvan ever shied away from expense in the past?) Instead, he indulges Elie/Didier in his plan to ostensibly buy heroin to euthanize the dog, though he suspects correctly that the money will not go to that end. In the meantime, the dog whimpers, uncomforted and unseen, in the back of the car, until it finally dies. That, thankfully, is also the point at which the movie expires.

After some disappointing films during a french film festival in my city this film was a complete change. Just a few characters are needed to transport couple of message to the audience. There are a lot of funny though short dialogs. The landscape they re riding through is really lovely and the scenes are not exaggeratively long. The soundtrack just fits perfect especially since Devendra Banhart provides the song for the most sad scene of the film, Yvan helps Ellie to dig the garden of Ellies mom, who hasn't seen him for ages. You really get moved to tears in this very moment. Well, although Yvan is sure that Ellie is a drug addict, he helps him. At the end it becomes true but there is no explicit message the film sends to the viewer, you can judge on your own, no moral oppression thus.