This movie was not that awful, though I would never choose to see it again. The story is about how individuals in a small town deal with loneliness. I will agree with what other reviewers have said about the dog. A lot of really heart-warming and good moments happen in this movie, but I was turned off by the way that they claimed that it was because of the influence of the girl's "friendly" dog, when really it was about a girl being a good neighbor. Hollywood also decided to throw in a lot of their inane "slapstick" moments which you've seen in every other movie with a dog in it, such as the dog's head-butting of the preacher's crotch.