A 12-year-old boy called Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) keeps reminding himself that suffering or hardship is relative. For long stretches of time, he lives what appears to be a dog’s life—this a reality in the 1985 Swedish film, My Life as a Dog, directed by Lasse Hallstrom. Ah, but this comic confection would be much better if it wasn’t childishly preoccupied with female breasts, primarily through spoken references to them. To be sure, dollops of kid and adult nudity are here too, and so, curiously, are flatness and insufficiency. Who, really, is the sexy Berit (Inge-Marie Carlsson), and even Ingemar’s goofy uncle (Tomas von Bromssen)? More annoying is that Dog is vulgar enough to almost smile on child sex. This Dog has had its day and should now be forgotten.

(In Swedish with English subtitles)