03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘The Friend' is a wonderful dog movie. Humans are allowed in.
'The Friend' is a better dog movie than it is a people movie, but it's such a wonderful dog movie that you may not mind that the people are merely fine.
The latest from the quixotic writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel ('What Maisie Knew,' 'The Deep End') adapts Sigrid Nunez's 2018 National Book Award-winning novel about a Manhattan writer and book editor named Iris (Naomi Watts), a solitary soul who inherits a Great Dane named Apollo from her late mentor. The mentor, Walter, is played in an early scene, a number of flashbacks and one imaginary conversation by Bill Murray, and if that's a bait-and-switch given that the actor is prominently featured in the posters and previews, we'll allow it.
