Good movie but grossly overrated

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I actually thought the film was pretty good. I read several reviews and it seemed like it was going to be terrible. A lot of people also said that the acting was bad, specifically Dakota Fanning's performance. I thought Dakota did a great job at the role, alright some parts were a bit rough around the edges. I don't know what people were talking about.The film had a good storyline. The only thing I would've changed was that the children in the movie seemed a bit young for the things they were doing. I know it was supposed to be set in a different time, but they should've been at least 12 or 13, instead of 8 or 9 like they actually were. Overall I did like the film. I'm 14 and I was a bit nervous watching it, but it really isn't anything bad unless you can't handle emotional movies. A job well done!

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.

Come on everyone what is with the bad reviews? "The rape scene" was nothing, it was less than a minute and would NOT be classed as child pornography because U CANT SEE ANYTHING so get over it! I am sick of all the bad reviews based on that!.OK now to MY thoughts on the movie, I thought it was actually a really good DRAMA. Each character played their role well and made it more believable, i loved the setting and clothing, they were very realistic for the era it was based in. I think that the rape scene, unlike some people, is actually really important, as it helps her grow as a character and in the end sing "hounddog" with absolute emotion that brought me to tears.Overall I would give it a 8 out of 10.

Southern Gothic story abounds with lots of Pre-Raphaelite imagery, and too many snakes to shake a stick at. Dakota's character is filmed in many Pre-Raphaelite shots, and she has that sense of calm longing on her face that has been made popular by the Pre-Raphaelites. In contrast, two of her main antagonists, her Grammie and her father, appear as Medieval country bumpkins in their last scene with her. It's pretty clear, there is a sub-textual analogy to the Renaissance and the Dark Ages, here. During her rape, one of Dakota's hands are pierced with a nail. This obvious Christ-like reference is strengthened later, when she appears in bed, with her white underwear bunched and puffy, as if in swaddling clothes, or even a Christ mounted in contorted agony on the cross. Snakes infest her garden of Eden. They are everywhere. The only way to survive being bitten is too spit the poison out, which she does metaphorically, when she takes a deep breathe and belts out the Blues. Visually, this Southern eden is filmed claustrophobic-ally. Besides tall grass and bushes, even the very trees work together to obscure the sun. Some have praised the Blues players as the light in Dakota's world. One reviewer rightly suggests this is patronizing, a stereotype of the magical Negroes in Vagger Bance? In any event, they free Dakota from this wicked Eden. By the way, Dakota's character is no Saint but a survivor. She knowingly lets her father be killed by not warning him about a snake.