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Marley and Anyone But Me
Critiq - wrote on 03/27/09
It would take a dog fanatic (and you know who you are) to love this romantic comedy cum household horror fantasy that is centered around a hyperkinetic canine. Frenzied is not too strong a term to describe the exaggerations of pet behavior for the sake of creating a unique starring animal role. To the rest of us, the notion that a young married couple would forgive and forget the devastation caused by this abhorrent graduate from terror school named Marley strains credulity as much as comfort level.
While it's based on a memoire, and it purports to be based on the author's true-life experiences with his Labrador Retriever, the screen version is way too exaggerated to believe that this approaches a faithful representation of the reality. The idea that Marley's so cute and lovable that everything ripped, chewed, swallowed or broken can merely be replaced and ignored is more out of a Stephen King alternate universe than the world as we know it.
The best parts of the movie, however, are the human qualities in a marriage between two smart and gentle people as richly enacted by a lovely Jennifer Aniston and a sweet Owen Wilson as Jen and John Grogan.
The story traces Grogan's career as a fledgling news reporter whose natural instinct for satiric humor caused his tough-softie editor Arnie Klein (scene-stealer Alan Arkin) to oblige his fledgling to write a column which turned out to be as much about life with Marley as other current themes. The astuteness of the assignment becomes evident when letters start pouring in and the paper's circulation doubles.
Obstreperous Kathleen Turner appears in a cameo as Ms. Kornblut, a master dog trainer who comes up against the dog from hell. Considering her drill sergeant approach, her scene is a howl, and one of the few in which the uber-dog characterization pays off.
As for the dog part, it had to read better in the book than what director David Frankel and screenwriters Scott Frank and Don Roos forged it into. A bark of protest for their lack of trust in their audience. Bad dog! Now, shut up!
