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First-time director Mike White’s Year of the Dog succeeds as a film about animal activists that is both satirical and dedicated. Whimsical yet melancholy, it stars Molly Shannon as Peggy, a 40-ish, unmarried office worker whose only companion in life is her new puppy, Pencil. Living with her dog, Peggy is quietly distant from others. When not cuddling up to Pencil, she spends most of her time stoically listening to other people’s problems, sweetly agreeing or at least empathizing.

Employed by a nondescript insurance company in southern California, she must deal with a severely repressed boss who speaks to her in painfully morose terms. Her coworker and friend Layla is a virtual whirlwind whose main interest is trying to get her runaround boyfriend to make a commitment.

During their one-sided lunchtime conversations, Layla is constantly pushing Peggy to forget her puppy and find a man.

When Pencil dies from toxic poisoning, Peggy is slowly forced to change the course of her life. After a period of sorrow, she finally goes on a date with Al (John C. Reilly), a neighbor who had tried to comfort her. Distressingly, he turns out to be an avid sports hunter.

When the conversation turns to endangered species, he explains that as a hunter, “you have to get as many as you can before they run out of them.” Not surprisingly, she leaves in outrage.

Next, Peggy is contacted by the kindly volunteer at the animal hospital, Newt (Peter Sarsgaard), who on hearing of her loss, suggests that she adopt another dog. When she takes in an abused German shepherd, however, her patience is sorely tried. He not only fails to obey but bites her hand when she scolds him. To make matters worse, Peggy has failed to pick up on the gay overtones in Newt’s behavior. When she falls for him, her affection is coldly rejected.

Undaunted, Peggy expands her love of dogs to other animals. But the film moves to darker humor when she makes a donation to an online animal group, illegally making use of money from her company. She even takes her brother’s kids to a protective farm that frees animals from abuse and slaughter, and in the process ruins her sister-in-law’s furs. We are forced to recognize that Peggy’s quest has become obsessive but can’t help believing that there is a saintly quality to it.

Obviously, director White is trying for a different kind of comedy than the raucously adolescent material he put together as screenwriter for “Nacho Libre” and “The School of Rock.”

With all her failings, Peggy is a frail human struggling to be morally just. The director, moreover, employs a cinematic style that brings out a strange flatness in his characters. The actors look directly into the camera, straight at us, as they speak their lines. We are left with an uncomfortable feeling that becomes self-consciously humorous.

Ultimately, “Year of the Dog” is a big budget picture with a small independent feel. If its quirkiness is not for all tastes, at least it explores some of the more bizarre aspects of the American psyche.

The Hoax is an entertainingly suspenseful movie about one of the most brilliant con jobs in the history of publishing. Author Clifford Irving claimed to have had several clandestine interviews with the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes who had given him exclusive permission to write his biography. His book was based mostly on forged letters and tape recordings Mr. Irving himself had created. After lengthy negotiations, Irving was able to convince his publisher to release the book and Life magazine to serialize it. He drew on memoirs from Hughes’ personal associates and had the luck to obtain military documents from the Air Force. McGraw-Hill published the bogus book but the author was finally foiled when Hughes, a notorious hermit, exposed the whole affair in his last phone interview.

Director Lasse Hallstrom (”The Cider House Rules”) offers a suspenseful and entertaining version of this outlandish stunt, with so many funny moments you may begin to feel nostalgic for the early 1970s. William Wheeler’s screenplay is both nerve-racking and humorous, but the project would have collapsed without Richard Gere’s hyperkinetic portrayal of Irving, who projects just enough chutzpah to be believable. It’s hard to keep from rooting for the con artist because Mr. Hallstrom makes Irving’s dupes in the publishing world so stone-faced, ruthless and uptight.

When we first meet Irving, his ego has just been bolstered by the prospect of having his new novel published. Sweet-talked by his agent and publishers, he runs off to buy a new car and celebrate with his wife, only to be told a few days later that his book is nothing but a third rate imitation of Portnoy’s Complaint. Devastated, in debt, and seemingly inundated with images of and articles about Howard Hughes, he begins to hatch plans for the fake biography. He and his hilariously nervous researcher, played by Alfred Molina, begin to steal documents from the Pentagon by stuffing them down their pants and “borrowing” the memoirs of Hughes’ former business manager, Noah Dietrich, played with confused self-indulgence by the venerable Eli Wallach. Noah is hoping Irving will help him write his own book.