How to Steal a Dog is a 2014 film from South Korea directed by Kim Sung-ho.
Ji-so is a 10-year-old girl. She is homeless, living in a pizza delivery truck with her mother Jeong-heon and little brother Ji-seok. In the backstory her father abandoned the family, the pizza delivery business having been a failure. Her mother is working odd jobs in a desperate effort to keep the three of them from starving, but their existence is precarious.
Ji-so spots a real estate flier advertising homes for $500 "per square" (meter). She interprets that to mean that there is a place called Per Square where houses cost five hundred bucks. So Ji-so, helped by her brother and by her enthusiastic classmate Chae-rang, set out to find a way to get $500. When she sees a flier advertising a $500 reward for a lost dog, Ji-so has an idea: steal a dog from a rich person, return it, and collect a reward.
As chance would have it, Ji-so's mom was just fired from her job as a waitress, at a restaurant owned by a bitchy old lady—who happens to have a cute little dog named Wolly.
Tropes:
- Animated Credits Opening: Starts with a cartoon, accompanied by Ji-so's narration, telling Aesop's fable of "The Hares and the Frogs
." Ji-so rejects that fable's moral, that there's always someone worse off, believing that her life is pretty darn bad at the moment. - Answer Cut: As the two girls talk about kidnapping Wolly, Ji-seok asks "Did you find a place to keep him?" Cut to a crude cardboard doghouse that the kids constructed.
- Call-Back: Practically the only bit of luxury that Jeong-heon has managed to hang on to, as she and her children have been reduced to living in a van, is a fancy pair of high-heeled shoes. Towards the end Ji-so opens up the shoebox and finds a scribbled note from her father, apologizing to Jeong-heon for being a bad husband and father and promising to come back in a week (it's been much longer than a week).
- The Caper: A G-rated version, as three rambunctious elementary school students create an intricate plot to steal a fancy dog. (Luring Wolly out with dog treats is key.)
- Captain Ersatz: Apparently Ji-so's missing father was trying to run a pizza business called "Pizza Huk".
- Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: First there's Ji-so's scheme to kidnap a dog and collect the ransom. At the same time, the old lady's nephew Soo-young, after finding out that the old lady is leaving her whole fortune to the dog instead of him, decides to kidnap and kill the dog. Hilarity ensues.
- Disappeared Dad: Ji-so's father, bankrupted, has abandoned their family and vanished.
- Dramatic Irony: Ji-so's teacher approaches her about having a birthday party at her house (this apparently being something that schoolteachers organize in South Korea). The teacher says it's becoming very common to have birthday parties at home, cheerfully explaining "Who doesn't have a house nowadays?" Ji-so, of course, lives in a van.
- Instructional Title: How to Steal a Dog
- No Name Given: The rich old lady with the dog is never named. The credits list her as "Lady Marcel" (Marcel is the name of the restaurant).
- The Problem with Pen Island: Ji-so interprets the sentence "$500 per square" to mean that houses on Per Square cost $500.
- Right Behind Me: Soo-young is ranting about how his aunt is both miserly and stuck in her ways. Naturally, her aunt comes up behind her and gets an earful.
- Setting Update: The film is based on an American children's book by Barbara O'Connor, which was set in North Carolina.
- The Stinger: After the credits start rolling, a pop-up window scene reveals that Jeong-heon has managed to make enough money selling pizza box lunches, using the van as a pop-up restaurant, to earn her and her kids a home. And Soo-young's aunt decided to forgive him and let him come back to work, although he won't get to build his dream apartment complex.
- This Is What the Building Will Look Like: Soo-young has grand plans to bulldoze the restaurant and build a big apartment tower and development on the land. He's frustrated by his aunt's refusal. He is given to staring at the model of the mixed-use complex he'd like to build.
- "Wanted!" Poster: Wanted posters for lost dogs give Ji-so her idea. At the end, she puts up a sort of reverse wanted poster for her Disappeared Dad, reassuring him that they're fine.
