“It’s time for you to know… I fight crime with ninjas.”

Justin’s rating: What a woofer.

Justin’s review: I think it’s high time that we institute a rating system for awful movies, because there are all sorts of levels of “bad” — and you need to know if you’re walking into the fun kind or the painful, dig-out-your-eyes, mourn-for-humanity kind. Maybe it should be a meter that you can rate how much suffering the average viewer will endure. In any case, there needs to be all the warning labels in the world for Love on a Leash, because only the most masochistic or foolhardy filmgoer should venture into this terrain.

This is bad. This is bad. Please, please hear me when I say that it is bad. Maybe I should shout it? THIS IS BAD. I’ll send a singing telegram to your house later to help drive home this point.

Let me put it this way: This is A Talking Cat!?! or Birdemic terrible in terms of sound design, acting, and overall incoherent plotting. What we’re dealing with here is the most idiotic of romcom setups produced in the absolute most slapdash fashion. It’s some dude who saw Ladyhawke a few times back in the day and thought, “I could make that same movie with a VHS camcorder and my Pentium 486!”

As Love on a Leash opens — to dead silence, I might add (I actually rewound the movie a few times thinking that my sound had muted) — we’re shown this golden retriever frolicking around a park. Suddenly the soundtrack kicks on and this mouth-breathing frat boy starts delivering the dog’s inner monologue. He’s frustrated, you see, because he used to be human and now is a dog who can’t get no chicks. Before you can raise a finger to ask how this happened, the dog’s already getting instructions from a sparkly magic water pond that charges him with making a human woman fall in love with him so that he can be a human again.

His grand quest promptly comes to a conclusion at the [checks] three-minute-30-second mark, as he discovers a girl named Lisa openly bemoaning her virginal state at the park. Lisa is best-known for her two defining characteristics: She has CGI acne, and she loves the color green. She wears about 40 different green outfits in this movie, including a green swimsuit and green underwear. Everything in her apartment is green. She drive a lime green VW bug. Her phone is green. Maybe she wanted to marry Kermit the Frog when she grew up? It’s never explained, so let’s just acknowledge that she’s the most desirable virgin in the whole world and move on.

“OOH! SHE IS THE ONE!” the dog pants. Then as Lisa prays for a man, the dog goes, “You don’t need a god, I am right here!”

That’s something a serial killer might say before throwing a chemical-soaked cloth over your mouth. But here? It’s just the dog being the dog.

We’re off to the races on this unconventional romance in which the dog wheedles his way into her life with the goal of [CENSORED FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD]. All the while, scenes abruptly start and stop, the sound occasionally stops working altogether, the camera cuts off parts of people’s faces, important events often happen just off-camera, green green green, and the plot lurches ahead faster than your brain can process. You have to give this your full and undivided attention, lest you find yourself 16 storybeats behind because you blinked or let out a very understandable wail of agony.

Fans of The Room may be better equipped to handle the jumbled filmmaking at play here. Among Love on a Leash’s various incidents include a creepy boss harassing Lisa, a talent scout being impressed with the dog’s ability to pick out a skirt from a clothes pile, another creepy guy hitting on Lisa, the dog trying to keep Lisa from marrying anyone, a gay guy proposing to her, a near-overdose, and montage scenes that happen in fast-forward over the span of two, even three seconds. Oh, and the dog’s inner monologue seems obsessed with making jokes at the expense of everything dumb that this movie is doing. The only thing this film doesn’t have is music, which makes it seem even that much more off-kilter.

Lisa attempts to juggle a love life between a somewhat nice, bland coworker and an absolute nutbar of a stalker who brings his judgmental mother along to the date. Said mother then corners Lisa at a tea party to tell her that if she marries this guy, Lisa must get her tubes tied because this will somehow interfere with the guy’s 170 I.Q. son growing up to become President. This happens 17 minutes into the movie, and I’m laughing in a way that looks like I’m screaming and crying trying to take this all in. It hurts so good.

It doesn’t get better, but it gets way wackier. After Lisa O.D.s due to everyone in the universe throwing themselves at her, she boldly announces that she’s going to only live with the dog from now on. This is enough to partially fulfill the prophecy of the magic pond, turning the dog into a tall, naked man who declares his love for her and proposes on the spot. But it’s only a half-hearted prophecy and proposal, for he keeps turning back into a dog during the day, becoming a man only at night or when it’s cloudy (the movie’s words, not mine). Apparently his curse was caused by being a “cheating playboy” in a former life, and we will just move on now. He’s got to learn what true love is to become a man forever.

So they unofficially get married in the apartment and take a lot of pictures that are disturbing on so many levels (girl in a wedding dress, guy on all fours with a leash around his neck?). For Lisa, this is the good life. She gets sweet loving at night and has a jogging partner during the day.

Dog — who is sometimes called “Prince” and sometimes “Alvin Flang” — agonizes over not being able to provide for Lisa, so he pursues a talent agency to be a star in ninja dog food commercials and earn some cash. As human-dogs do. But he’s embarrassed to be seen doing this. Meanwhile, nobody seems to understand that Lisa’s found the right canine for her, so her human relationships take a nosedive. Will Lisa ever achieve her great goal of being a manager? Will the dog ever become a man in broad daylight? Will nosy neighbor Rita ever shut her piehole? Is this movie condoning bestiality?

Eventually, the mess of muddled, confusing subplots is handled by… a car smacking right into the dog and killing him. I was on the floor, pounding it with my fists and laughing so hard that I think I blacked out. Truly, a tragedy for the ages. To close things out, years go by, Lisa gets older, and the dog-boy is resurrected to reunite with her, they get married (again), and they both turn young via magic. The end.

Maybe you’re wondering how Love on a Leash came to be. Well, it’s pretty straight-forward, really. An older Chinese lady named Fen Tian wrote this movie in her native language and then had someone translate it badly into English. She then went to her church to get funding for a movie about Jesus helping people find love. The church eventually wised up to the insanity of this plot and pulled its funding, leaving Fen Tian to pay actors in cantaloupes. I didn’t make that up. It’s the only explanation for why something like this would come to be. Cantaloupes. Oh, also the two leads actually fell in love and got married in real life (the two human leads, I should clarify — nobody was marrying that golden retriever. I think.).

I am not exaggerating when I say that this may be the longest 90-minute movie I’ve ever seen. The ridiculous twists, out-of-nowhere lines, the endless green dresses, 100 random shots of ducks, and rapid pacing is absolutely exhausting to behold. I felt absolutely wrung out after an hour of dog-human mishaps. So my advice to those who load this into a chamber of a cinematic gun is to surround yourself with as many encouraging friends as possible to tackle this as a group.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, after all.

Intermission!

• Who needs sound over the opening credits? Not you, that’s for sure! There is NO MUSIC in this entire movie.
• “No girls, no fun man. No girls no fun.”
• “You laughing at me, water pond? How dare you!”
• Dogs have a god complex
• The dog in a car song
• Girls fart a lot while putting on dresses
• “Kyle, what a loser! I’ll poop in his shoes!”
• ALVIN FLANG is his name. Remember it always.
• Dogs are great finding matching clothes in a free-for-all clothes pile
• This movie is OBSESSED with green dresses
• “Ugh, I need doggy prozac!”
• All of the people that are filmed in almost complete shadow
• “One of these tastes Japanesy!”
• Is it normal to go on dates with a guy and his judgmental, weight-obsessed mother at the same time?
• “My mother was a gynecologist and has a Ph.D. in nutrition.”
• “I wish you could talk to me.” “I broke your favorite glasses!”
• Kyle proposes by minute 20 — as an open marriage, because he’s gay
• Lots of marriage proposals include “don’t worry, I won’t touch you” and “we’ll go to a hospital and use artificial insemination”
• You’re offering her fur and diamonds? You’re a clothing salesman, for pete’s sake!
• “It’s not safe to see a hooker!”
• “YOU’LL BE A CHUIAUA!”
• The dog singing while Lisa is sobbing from the near-rape. Read the room, man.
• The super-scream echo
• Well she got home from the hospital fast
• “It’s me, your dog!” If I had a nickel for every time I heard that.
• So they get married in the rain that same night?
• “I had such a long day. I can’t wait to be human to tell you about it.”
• So many shots of ducks on the pond. So many.
• Yeah you whip him with his own tie
• Let’s all shake the dog’s paw and treat him like he’s human.
• ANOTHER green dress?!
• Why are these friends fighting? This fight makes no sense. She’s married to a DOG. What don’t you understand?
• SURPRISE DANCE DATE WITH MULTIPLE PAID MEN!
• Let’s all eat our dinner in the most awkward way
• Rita may be the most annoying busybody in movie history
• Exciting sex produces excellent kids
• Ninjas sell the best dog food
• He calls her a “pizza-faced cinder block” even as he’s saving her
• Lisa’s great goal in life… is to be an apartment manager?
• He’s dead, but she’s still waiting for him. Sure.