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Mildly amusing, low-key, offbeat comedy that plays out like many other relationship low budget type movies, except this uses a shocking plot element to drive any on-screen friction. Stay (Titled Sleeping Dogs Lie on DVD) is a light-hearted morbid little amusement, and while dried out funnyman Bob Goldthwait never exploits any of the inherent discomforts dormant within this absurd love story, he never takes anything much beyond it's one-noted approach either. The modest affair uses this gimmicky device to varied success, becoming both a source of glee when cultivating it's charming sense of humor, and a limiting discouragement which comes along with basing everything around this cheap shot.Thankfully Goldthwait manages to get an impressive range out of the restrictive screenplay , primarily due to the hard fought performance coming from lead Melinda Page Hamilton. While the movie quickly becomes a thing-for-which-this-plot-element-is-to-thrive, Hamilton maintains a fair amount of integrity throughout, showing a convincing range and dedication to a project no one could have really thought too highly of, especially on paper. Yet, she gives this woman's plight an emotional integrity that will override any sneaking suspicions that Goldthwait penned the rushed script in a blatant attempt to turn heads with it's superficially assigned motives, showing something far more important then any dirty little secret she may harbor by acting and reacting to the ones she loves around her once a certain stability she had relied on started to crumble. To that effect, the movie rises above the small sum of it's parts when relating to an audience the burdens of living with something that is too embarrassing to tell anyone.For the tiny pockets of hilarity and impressive bouts of emotional substance it provides, Sleeping Dogs Lie still stays bogged in a mediocrity when not directly invested in it's chief conflict. Your typical supporting characters and revolving plot arcs do little to involve one in the particular psychology invested around a pleasing center theme of this movie, making some of the supplementary material unnecessary and irrelative to it's strong points.
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