In an age when political debates around racism and colonialism are more charged than ever, you’d expect Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight to offer a thoughtful dive into these issues. And to its credit, the film’s heart is in the right place but the setting doesn’t quite lend itself to the nuance these themes demand. We follow Bobo (Lexi Venter), an eight-year-old white girl living with her family on a farm in Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) during the Rhodesian Bush War. The war and her family’s deep-rooted attachment to the land unfolds through her eyes, even as everything around them begins to unravel.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is at its strongest when it turns its focus to racism. Seeing it through the eyes of a white child isn’t a perspective we often get, but it’s a crucial one. Children are not born racist, they’re shaped by the world around them, and often, that shaping starts at home. Here, we witness how Bobo begins to absorb the casual, ingrained racism of her parents. She repeats offhand remarks to her maid and nanny, Sarah (Zikhona Bali), and we watch how those words ripple through their relationship. But the film also makes clear that racism doesn’t flow in just one direction. Sarah lives in fear as well, but of her own community, where getting too close to a white child could be a death sentence.
However, when it comes to its exploration of colonialism, it is when the film begins to fall flat as it doesn’t feel like the right lens to explore it. To be honest, this family has done nothing wrong outside of being racist and a bit entitled. They are simply living their lives in Zimbabwe in peace and are not threatening nor harming anyone. However, they are drowning in paranoia and fear as they are constantly under threat by local insurrectionists who will absolutely kill them as we constantly hear in news clippings of white families (including the children) being attacked and murdered by locals. Because of this you feel sorry for them as they are being pushed to their breaking point and this didn’t feel like the films intended take. It felt like the film didn’t want us to have that kind of sympathy for the family, but it unintentionally does.
With that said, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight has all the right ingredients for a compelling feature, but the execution just falls disappointingly flat. Director Embeth Davidtz clearly has the potential to helm a strong film, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover, especially when it comes to the technical craft, which feels noticeably underdeveloped here. That said, if there’s one bright spot, it’s the breakout performance from newcomer Lexi Venter, who delivers one of the most striking child performances I’ve seen in quite some time.
My Rating: C+
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