Wendy and Lucy

Plot

A young woman, Wendy Carroll, is travelling to Alaska with her dog Lucy, where she hopes to find work at a cannery. They become stranded in Oregon when their car breaks down, and she lacks the funds to repair it. At a supermarket, she leaves Lucy outside while she attempts to shoplift dog food. She is apprehended and Lucy disappears. After she is released from police custody, she discovers Lucy is missing and searches for her in vain. She eventually discovers that Lucy was taken to a dog pound and rehomed. Wendy goes to the home where Lucy now lives and decides she is happier there. She gets on a train bound north.

Cast

Box office

In its opening weekend, Wendy and Lucy grossed $18,218 in 2 theaters in the United States, ranking #54 at the box office. By the end of its run, Wendy and Lucy grossed $865,695 domestically and $326,960 internationally for a worldwide total of $1,192,655.

Critical reception

The film has received generally positive reviews from critics. Film review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes classified the film as "fresh" with a 85% approval rating among 178 critics, with a rating average of 7.4 out of 10. The film won both Best Picture and Best Actress at the 12th Toronto Film Critics Association Awards. Wendy and Lucy was placed at 87 on Slant Magazine's best films of the 2000s.

Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008, including those of the Chicago Reader, New York Post, Newsweek, The Austin Chronicle, LA Weekly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, The Oregonian, Slate, The Village Voice, and The Christian Science Monitor.