Sabrina: Well, well, well. It’s the final Christmas movie Defector has decided to watch this year, and I simply can’t think of a less thrilling choice than Merv. What is Merv about? Technically speaking, Merv is about Merv, a dog whose human parents have just split up. The movie opens with Merv being transported between the homes of Russ (Charlie Cox) and Anna (Zooey Deschanel). Have any of you ever shared custody of a pet before?
Kelsey: I have not shared custody of a pet, no. And after watching Merv, I probably never would.
Ray: I have not, and as with Kelsey, I find the idea aggressively repellent.
Israel: I have not had a pet even so almost certainly not shared custody of one. Though I did date a woman with a cat for a bit.
Sabrina: I too have not. I recently went through a breakup and we decided to split our two-cat household like normal adults. But I have known people who share custody of pets and it has always seemed like a bad idea to me. Merv was ample evidence that this hunch was right.
Ray: In fairness, Merv didn’t have much of a chance with these two mopes dictating his daily life. He couldn't even act convincingly sad, as though he were saying, "These are my choices? Really? Call the shelter. I need other options."
Kelsey: Proof that Merv is being mistreated by his now split-up parents is that Merv’s father Russ has created an Instagram account for him called "the Mervinator" where he seems to make AI images of Merv dressed up as things. The account had 27.3k followers. I hated this!
Israel: I think the worst part of this movie is the idea that Merv would be sad that his owners aren’t together instead of the much likelier reason that Merv is sad because he realizes he is trapped with the most Brooklyn couple in existence and there is no escape.
Kelsey: Merv is NOT in Brooklyn. Canonically, Merv is in a much worse place: Boston.
Israel: I figured Merv probably wasn't supposed to be Brooklyn. It just has extreme Brooklyn energy. A real trapped-in-2010-Brooklyn purgatory that can be found anywhere particularly in bad movies like this.
Sabrina: Sometimes depression is the only logical response to living in Boston. About 15 minutes into Merv I realized this movie is what would happen if you gave a spin-off to the couple from Best in Show with Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock, whose dog Beatrice is depressed, except not funny. Maybe the most horrifying thing about Merv was that it was maybe the most millennial movie I've ever seen. The number of Facebook friendiversary videos and montages we had to watch? The enduring presence of Zooey Deschanel? The aforementioned micro-influencing AI art Instagram account? This movie made me feel like a fucking geriatric!
Ray: Everything about the script seemed rushed, like "This relationship blows but we're going to wait for an hour to tell you why, so Charlie Cox and Zooey Deschanel spend that hour being the kind of people you would cut adrift in the Arctic just on principle." I almost wanted to know the backstory right away so I could fast-forward to the end with a clearer conscience. Two unlikable people fell out of love with each other. Why? No idea. How does this manifest itself? Through the dog. How does the dog display his unhappiness? Lying down. My corneas are still pissed off.
Kelsey: They take Merv to the vet at one point because he seems sad, and the funniest part about this movie to me is that the vet offers them a quite easy solution—put Merv on an antidepressant—and the two of them act like she's offered to put Merv down. NO! We can’t put Merv on an antidepressant! What if he loses his sparkle!?
Sabrina: Kelsey that dilemma pissed me off so much! Merv would have probably preferred the Xanax to having to witness the excruciating recoupling of his parents. There was no explanation given for Anna and Russ’s refusal to medicate Merv, and as the friend of several happily Xanaxed dogs, I felt for the little guy. But when Anna made a "superfood mix" for Merv to "alleviate his symptoms of ennui and sadness," I realized why they didn’t want to put Merv on Xanax: they’re probably anti-vaxxers.
Ray: The vet reminds me of the physician in the Lacey Chabert movie I volunteered to watch last year—abandoning any clinician’s skills to look inside the dog’s soul because that’s what you’re paying $225 for. "The dog's sad." No. The dog hates people because these two people represent the species for him.
Israel: I am thinking a lot about the fact that this movie had the nerve to not only have a "Who Let The Dogs Out" needle-drop but to have multiple needle-drops of dog-related music cues. One of which was a T-Pain song about his dog's (slang for male friend in this case) birthday for a scene where they go to a dog birthday party. Guys, I hated this movie so much.
Ray: Every dog pun was more painful than the one before it, as though the script was AI'd before it was AI'd. Layers of horrifying writing to go with the dreadful character development.
Kelsey: We haven’t even discussed the key plot of this movie yet, which is that because Merv is depressed, Russ decides to take Merv on vacation(?) to Florida(?) to a dog hotel(?) so that Merv can become un-depressed. He does this without Anna’s permission because it’s "his week with Merv," which is frankly insane. Also Russ is British for some reason.
Israel: Charlie Cox does the whole "I'm such a slob and a boy-man, my apartment is a mess like my life and I wear cool band tees even though I'm in my 40s" thing. Zooey Deschanel, God bless her, is now a manic pixie dream auntie. She is holding a candle for 2004 so badly and it's hard to watch because I actually do like her as an actress.
Kelsey: God that's such a good point. I feel kind of bad for Zooey who was clearly typecast into this role for "quirky dog mom." Genuinely the only surprising thing about her role in this movie is that she doesn’t sing.
Sabrina: Thanks for keeping us on track, Kelsey. When we get to Florida and see the dog hotel, I felt like the movie moved into some uncanny valley where it was spon-con for something, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was advertising. The dog hotel was never named and didn’t appear to be real. Was Merv paid for by Big Dog?
Kelsey: When I began Merv, it did say that my viewing was sponsored by Chewy. So perhaps that is Big Dog.
Ray: I wish that Big Dog had script control so we could have been spared the salsa with the matron who was trying to seduce Charlie Cox through the powers of dance. As for Deschanel, I have to assume she read the script and chose this vehicle because it could be shot in three hours.
Sabrina: Unfortunately for Russ, Merv's depression is not cured by Florida dog vacation. Merv does not want to run into the ocean with him nor frolic as the many other dogs do. We learn this in another montage set to an atrocious song called "Puppies Are Forever" (a line followed by "not just for Christmas"). Russ sends a picture of a sad-looking Merv to Anna, who is also sad because she is still in Boston and at her friend’s place with her friend’s two annoying kids. So she decides to fly to Florida to help save Merv’s spirit. Do any of these people have jobs? Russ has a job that he’s faking sick to escape. Anna does not have a job because she has bangs and a whimsical spirit.
Kelsey: Anna has a job!! She’s an eye doctor!!! We know this because the whole movie Russ squints because he refuses to let Anna check his eyes even though he clearly can’t see.
Israel: Imagine going to Florida to try and MEND a relationship, smh.
Ray: Finally, the reason why they broke up. She learns she cannot have children, and rather than sitting down for five minutes and then thinking about, say, adoption, they break up even though they allegedly love each other. For this, they waited an hour of my time for the only un-stupid plot point, for which Merv is supposed to pay by being ping-ponged from apartment to apartment. And Florida is where you go to blow up a relationship, right?
Sabrina: When Anna gets to Florida, she, Russ, and Merv go to a restaurant for dogs and people. Are these real? The dogs were all sitting on literal chairs, and there was a dog menu. Do dogs want to be on chairs? The server informs them that it’s "Yappy Hour."
Kelsey: As a dog owner, you could not pay me to take my dog to that restaurant if it exists. The most unrealistic thing about this movie, in my opinion, is that the kind of people who take their dog to a dog hotel in Florida to try and cure his depression have also trained their dog. Merv is incredibly well-behaved (played by a real dog!) and so is every other dog at the dog hotel. In real life, someone’s poorly trained dog would have shit on the floor at that restaurant.
Sabrina: Yes, shout out to Gus the Dog, the actor behind Merv, who is a real professional given the slop into which he’s been thrust.
Ray: I question Gus’s agent here. I definitely question his motivation ("Come on, more boredom! Channel your inner ennui!"). And I virulently question his refusal to try and escape. At least the bug-eyed dog substitute Russ buys for no earthly reason tried momentarily to flee.
Sabrina: Soon on the beach Russ meets a sexy single, Jocelyn, who has a girl dog named Lolly. Merv proceeded to do that thing in movies that I loathe, where two (heterosexual) adults that are flirting watch their (heterosexual) dogs also flirt. So Russ and Jocelyn are vibing, and Merv and Lolly are vibing, and soon they all go to Lolly’s birthday party.
Kelsey: We must mention that Jocelyn … RECOGNIZES MERV FROM INSTAGRAM despite living thousands of miles away and Merv only having 27k Instagram followers. This is very unrealistic in my opinion.
Israel: Between this and the previous movie we chatted about I’m concerned that no one knows how to write two adults flirting anymore? Are people that rusty or is it all just being done by computers now?
Ray: Yes. Yes they are.
Sabrina: At Lolly’s birthday party, Merv, along with Russ and Anna, sees a "dog healer" named Gaia who channels the voice of Merv, who, in her interpretation, is also British.
Ray: You keep dragging us back to the plot like a D.A. trying to recreate the crime scene.
Kelsey: The dog healer part of the movie made me feel like I was incredibly high despite being very sober while watching Merv. Something about this hippie Florida woman putting her hands on Merv and then translating his thoughts made me feel insane. Leave Merv and his thoughts alone!!!!
Ray: I thought Merv had more rapport with the dog healer, which is to say nearly none. And let’s not forget Anna's parents, who were absolutely pointless insertions designed to (a) pad the script by 15 minutes and (b) get Patricia Heaton a check.
Sabrina: Anna and Russ fight again over why they broke up, and she ends the fight by saying "If you and I were a band, we’d be called The Mistakes." What??? Was this supposed to be a good line? A reference to something? How long was she sitting on that one?
Kelsey: I thought for sure this was going to be the point where Zooey sang because she loves to sing, but even with this set-up, there was no singing.
Ray: Then they kept going to back variations of the line, each more excrescent than the last. I insist it took less time to write it than film it, and barely more time than to watch it.
Israel: This movie was a little like Materialists but like the generic store-brand version.
Sabrina: Soon Anna, Russ, and Merv swing by Russ’s parents’ house, where Anna tells Russ’s mom that she recently cut bangs. This was shocking to me, implying the existence of a bangless Zooey Deschanel. Russ’s mom is really mean to Anna until she reveals that she’s just being mean because she misses her. Later that night, Russ and Anna sneak out of the house to go … salsa dancing? And then they fall into a pool? At this point I felt like we had strayed so far from Christmas that I wondered if this movie was initially conceived as a regular rom-com, and then Christmas was sort of shoehorned into it later.
Israel: I'm starting to think this isn’t about Merv at all … that "my dog is sad" is just a sneaky way to get your ex to talk to you again. We at Defector do not promote using your pets to emotionally blackmail a past lover.
Ray: That's it exactly! A Christmas movie about a depressed dog was never about either Christmas or the dog! This is a revelation that never occurred to any of the people responsible for this 107-minute crime against culture.
Kelsey: I also have to admit that it feels absolutely ridiculous to me that the thing that could bring two people who have fallen out of love and broken up back together is … visiting one of their parents? Maybe this is narrow-minded on my part, but I just kind of refuse to believe that all it takes is one night drinking liquor in a hot tub at your in-laws' house to fix whatever this is.
Sabrina: After Russ and Anna return to the dog hotel, Russ ends up kissing Jocelyn but then feeling weird about it—boring! He later falls asleep on the beach and when he wakes up, Merv is gone. This was a moment when I felt myself waking up. Would they actually imperil Merv in Merv? Would Anna and Russ reunite in their efforts to relocate Merv, bonding in the trenches of emotional crisis?
Israel: If they had killed off Merv it would’ve been out of mercy.
Sabrina: Unfortunately for Merv, he’s found within seconds. Anna asks Russ if they can start over, and he says no. Then Russ makes the big-boy decision to give Merv to Anna so he can have just one home. He finally cleans his disgusting apartment and goes to the pound to get Merv 2.0. This scene was insane to me because the gay guy who works at the pound has an uncanny memory of Merv, Russ, and Anna when there is nothing memorable or compelling about this couple beyond Merv. Also when they were in the pound, there was a moment when I thought that Russ and the Gay Pound Guy would kiss, and then I was briefly back on board with Merv. But alas.
Kelsey: When he lost Merv, I was losing my shit. I was so angry. How could he forget about Merv when Merv is theoretically the only thing he cares about! I would never forget about Merv and leave him on the beach at night by himself. But the Gay Pound Guy does kind of give us the movie’s moral when he says, "You wouldn’t believe what some of these guys have been through. Broken engagements. Broken homes." The moral of Merv is that the worst thing that can happen to a dog is a breakup.
Israel: I still do not understand anything about Russ's decision here other than the movie required a big breakup moment to force our manchild into being a grown-up and wearing slacks and getting glasses—like a reverse She’s All That—this was the most disingenuous part of a very disingenuous movie.
Ray: My decision to actively hate the movie is based on how shoddily everything was done. I don’t have a lot of expectation for holiday movies especially the Hallmark genre, but definitely see why Hallmark would have passed on this. This is almost surely an 11th grade film-writing assignment in which the students are given one night to turn in a treatment during Exam Week. It actually failed to reach the level of formulaic tedium I imagine most of those movies traffic in. I apologized to the glass of wine I was holding for subjecting it to this.
Kelsey: I really wanted to like Merv. I like Zooey Deschanel enough. I liked Gus the Dog. I wanted it to be fun and cute, but instead it was just like a more serious Hallmark movie which is a genre that I don’t think anyone has ever wanted. At least the Hallmark movies are fun! They never feel bad! Merv felt bad the whole time (both the dog and the movie).
Sabrina: I also really wanted to like Merv. I admired the gumption of a movie to name itself after a guy we’ve never heard of, à la Michael Clayton. I liked that the publicity for this movie appeared to be posters of Zooey Deschanel, Charlie Cox, and Gus the Dog with the name "MERV" and little else. I don’t even really like movies about animals that star actual animals, but I think the best part of Merv for me was Merv. I hope Gus the Dog switches agents and lands himself some meatier roles.
Israel: I get it. You wanna be a star, have your face on the poster, get top billing but it's important to be selective about the roles you take. It’s only about the work, Gus.
Ray: Next time, Gus should make sure his part includes a scene in which he gets to bite one of the actors, just to give us a compelling reason to like him. That he wasn't given the opportunity here is just one more pitiable miss in a movie literally made entirely of them.
Kelsey: Of all the injustices Merv must face (wearing a bowtie, being taken to Florida, being abandoned on a beach), Russ does get a new dog at the end of the movie named Angelina. This is upsetting. Russ moved on so fast. Poor Merv.
Sabrina: Also, the day Russ gets Angelina from the pound he lets her off-leash in an unfenced park. How was this a good idea? Of course she’s gonna bolt!
Kelsey: Obviously, this was necessary because in the sinister reading of this movie, Russ lets Angelina off because he knows Anna will be in the park and lead him right to her!! Manipulative little Russ!
Sabrina: Merv ends with Russ and Anna kissing, I think? My notes say, "This is stupid. We’ve lost the magic of movies!" I appreciate all of you slogging through this flick with me. If you were Merv’s agent, are there any franchises or creative teams you’d want him to work with next? I’d definitely watch Benoit Blanc team up with Merv to solve a murder.
Ray: If I were Merv’s agent, I’d be out of the business after this, working in a sandwich shop and wondering how it all went so completely bad.
Israel: My advice to that agent is reject any script with "Who Let The Dogs Out" in it.
Kelsey: If I were Merv's agent, I would simply get him a recurring role on a sitcom. I think he’d be great at it. Merv deserves money.
Sabrina: Thank you all for MERVING with me, this was fun! Unlike the movie, Merv.
