ME & MR. CIGAR

With federal agents in hot pursuit, two Texas teens and a small dog with unusual abilities roar off to New York in a battered pickup.

Haynes, lead singer of the Butthole Surfers, crafts a gloriously unhinged road trip from a host of promising elements. Five years after meeting Mr. Cigar—a loyal, frighteningly smart, and possibly immortal escapee (it turns out) from a secret government project—Oscar is living the dream, organizing local roadside raves. The idyll comes to an abrupt end, though, as a series of ominous encounters with corrupt cop Cletus Acox and scarred military man Colonel Sanders, coupled with a plea for cash from his desperate older sister, send Oscar, with his canine sidekick and his best buddy Lytle, haring off cross-country. Unfortunately, in the meantime Oscar has unwittingly quaffed a Red Bull doctored with both MDMA and LSD—which adds, to say the least, a hallucinatory quality to a narrative already propelled by staccato minichapters, profane banter, surreal events highlighted by a bank robbery in the buff, a climactic battle with goons both visible and otherwise, and more than one fatality that turns out to be only temporary. Oscar is wreathed by a colorful supporting cast led by a pooch who is generally the brightest and most dangerous character in the room. Lytle, who is Black, is the only character who doesn’t present as White.

As boy-and-his-dog tales go, a long, long way from Lassie.