The Friend: Why a Magnificent Animal is the Heart of a Film That Is Not Really a Dog Movie

March 2026

 

The opening scene of The Friend...

Has a 75 year old Bill Murray jogging with a smooth easy gait along the river...

 

If you have ever seen a 75 year old run... you know that couldn’t happen...

Men that age move with short jerky movements...like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz....

 

So is this how Walter really runs... like he is 30?

Or is this how Walter sees himself running?

 

So right away The Friend leaves clues....

That this is not simply a Dog Movie about a Great Dane named Apollo...
 

But although the significance of this scene...

Takes a while to sink in...

 

It is important...

 

Because this is really a film about the stories that people tell themselves...

 

And not about a dog...

 

Who.... as magnificent as he is...

 

Is a really a metaphor for the mythology Walter has constructed about himself...

And then sold... to his friend, Iris...

 

As well as many others...

 

Now Walter running along the river puts this story in motion...

For that is when he first sees Apollo...

 

But at first we only know this...

Because he tells this story at a dinner party...

 

And Walter is a raconteur who loves a captive audience...

So although Apollo is the subject of his story...

 

It is really about Walter...

 

But Bill Murray is not the real star of The Friend...

 

It is the Great Dane... Apollo

A majestic... massive creature...

Strong, muscular, regal...

The size of small human...

 

A beautiful white animal with black markings...

 

Who is simply stunning...

 

But The Friend is not your typical dog movie...

Even though the basic premise at first appears to be the story of a dear friend, Walter...

Who bequeaths his beloved dog to a lonely woman, Iris, to rescue her from her sad, empty life...

 

But this story is way more complicated than that...

 

And unlike the usual dog movie...

Apollo is not anthropomorphized...

And he is not charming... or loving

He is just there....

 

And we never know what he is thinking...

 

So The Friend does not take you to where you think it will...

 

But that is why this is a fine film...

With stand out performances by Naomi Watts and Bill Murray...

 

And the dog...

 

Because none other than such a majestically beautiful Great Dane...

Could have played Apollo...

 

But in order to explain why...

I need to issue a spoiler alert...

 

For at the beginning Apollo and Iris are both grieving Walter...

And yes...dogs do grieve...

 

And Iris, of course, resists keeping Apollo...

She lives in a small rent controlled apartment that doesn’t allow pets

And she can’t afford to move...

 

So at first you think you see the arc of this story...

Iris will come to love dog...

And sacrifice to keep him...

 

But there is a scene later in the film

A flashback to when Walter first sees Apollo

That tells you what this story is really about...

 

Apollo is high on a hill...

With no one around him... and no collar to identify him

And no indication of how he got there...

 

Sitting regal and composed...

 

Like a god who had just descended from the heavens...

 

And like his namesake...

He is the most beautiful of dogs...

 

It is then you realize that Apollo is a metaphor...

In a story about two writers...

 

Because Walter...

Who had been Iris’s her mentor...and for one brief moment her lover...

Was Iris’s Apollo...

A god she worshipped and adored for decades...

 

A role he fostered...

Savored...

And used to his advantage....

 

But that in the end proved his undoing....

Which is why he ended his life...

 

Because we find out that Walter is not what he first appears...

And he certainly was not deserving of the devotion shown him by his dog...

 

Nor anyone else for that matter...

 

And Apollo was not given as a gift...

But as a burden...

 

Much as Walter was in life...

To all the women around him...

 

And Apollo was not beloved...

He was a prop like so many others in Walter’s life...

 

Now it takes a while for Iris to come to this realization...

 

But then she does something interesting...

 

Since she is writer...

She rewrites their story...

In a way that punctures the grandiosity created by Walter’s self-constructed mythology

 

Of which Apollo was the symbol...

 

And invents a confrontation with Walter...

That could never have happened...

But, nevertheless, in her telling, leaves Iris triumphant...

 

But in this version of their story ...

Iris removes this grand beautiful dog...

And replaces him with a tiny, annoying, obnoxious, yapping dachshund...

 

So The Friend is a film about how writers like Walter and Iris...

 

Shape narratives ...

To tell the stories they want others to believe......

 

So the dogs are simply symbols...

 

But the dog who plays Apollo is such a magnificent creature...

 

That without ever saying a word...

 

He steals a movie about people

 

Who think that reality ...

 

Is simply the construct of the words they choose to use...

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