How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog (2002)

Starts out as a sharp if not especially original comic goof on the L.A. lifestyle (especially the bleak theater scene), but poops out and goes soft like all movies with cute kids changing curmudgeonly adults is wont to do. Kenneth Branaugh gives a fairly restrained performance that, dare I say, might be the best work he's done in the last five or six years. (Check his IMDb credits for a look at how little that faux-hyperbolic statement actually means.)

Grade: C+