After watching the insane adolescent behaviour featured in MSC: The Movie and Magnum Opus: The .MOVie and vying for something deeper than amateur stunts, Therapy Dogs does a decent job answering my wishes.

Co-executive produced by maverick filmmaker Matt Johnson (The Dirties, Operation Avalanche, the upcoming tech biopic Blackberry) and crossing a fictional narrative with fly-on-the-wall B-roll of schooldays at Mississauga’s Cawthra Park Secondary School, Therapy Dogs is presented to audiences as a work-in-progress video yearbook made by reclusive teens Justin (Justin Morrice) and Ethan (director Ethan Eng).  Their footage runs together, sometimes interrupting a previous shot or thought, making this film feel authentic right from the hop.  The friends aren’t inspired by anything at first, other than whatever goofiness they can think of or whoever looks interesting to them at their high school. 

The video rides a brief tangent about a former student who committed suicide days before the last day of high school. Justin and Ethan’s project features video from the deceased’s own tapes, which starts mirroring the tape that we’ve been watching and leading up to this moment.  When the copycat filmmaking continues, the audience can’t help but feel like the third-party footage is foreshadowing feelings either Justin or Ethan are experiencing. 

Psychological health isn’t explored much in Therapy Dogs, almost as if those moments are supposed to play as assumptions towards later clips of someone sitting quietly by themselves.  However, that correlation isn’t enough to support that assumption.  Neither is the intercutting short film that is possibly a cry for help from its on-screen subject.  The ending these moments accumulate towards is an emotional sucker punch nonetheless, but the lead-up is a thin acknowledgment of an ongoing epidemic in need of more direct focus.  I feel Therapy Dogs doesn’t know how vague its activism actually is.

Those issues aside though, Therapy Dogs is a rare example of the high school experience being represented with optimistic reassurance.  At the end, the credits state the film has been made without the approval of the Peel District School Board (where Cawthra Park falls under), but segments of Therapy Dogs could be used as great promotion for the PDSB towards eighth graders nervous about their academic transition.  The teens are beaming and getting involved with extracurricular activities, and the teachers (when they’re on-screen) are shown to be involved in daily routines and concerned about the student body.  I suppose Eng could’ve used this contrast as another resource to address heavier material but, quite frankly, I just liked being in the company of this school. “How do you do, fellow kids?”

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie