Marley & Me (2008)
Directed by David Frankel
Written by Scott Frank and Don Roos
Starring Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Alan Arkin
Release Date December 25th, 2008
Published December 24th, 2008
I haven't had a dog since I was a kid. His name was Rusty. I have this painting that someone bought at goodwill or a garage sale that just happens to be of a dog that looks exactly like Rusty. I cannot walk past it without smiling. Rusty was the dumbest dog in history. He would answer to any name shouted loud enough and he chased parked cars. But he was my dog and I loved him. The new movie Marley & Me with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston inspires that sort of pet related introspection. The movie based on John Grogan's bestselling book is filled with spot on recreations of the kinds of memories dogs leave behind.
John Grogan wanted to be a globetrotting journalist who wrote the stories that changed the world. Instead, he went to work at the Sun Sentinel in Florida and covered city council meetings and wrote the occasional obituary. When he got his big break it wasn't going to Columbia to track the drug trade like his pal Sebastian (Dr. McSteamy, Eric Dane).
Nope, John Grogan's big break came when a columnist quit the Sentinel on short notice and his editor (Alan Arkin, in all his cantankerous glory) needed someone to fill 600 words in the lifestyle section. That was when John wrote his first article on his dog Marley, aka the world's worst dog, and launched himself to national syndication.
Marley was the world's worst dog. He ate everything from shoes to drywall. If there was a thunderstorm he might do more damage than the storm itself. John and his wife Jenn, also a journalist, got Marley when Jenn began talking about having a baby and John decided, behind her back, that he wasn't ready. Sebastian suggested getting the dog as a way of putting her off and it worked for a while. Eventually however, the Grogan's did have a baby and the family and Marley continued to grow.
Directed by David Frankel, the movie made from John Grogan's bestseller is filled with heart and humor in a most earnest fashion. It's something unlikely in the age of irony and disaffection for a movie to be so bravely serious about the day to day life of a family. The risk is being labeled cheesy, sentimental or cornball. Director David Frankel doesn't seem to care about the labels and in not caring the film is almost heroic.
There is nothing wrong with irony but once in a while a movie like Marley & Me is a welcome respite from the modern form of humor all detached and 'meta' and weird for the sake of weird, or awkward for the sake of awkward. Marley & Me treats the family life of John and Jenn Grogan with a seriousness that keeps the movie from becoming the Beethoven sequel so many of us imagined.
If Frankel and writers Scott Frank and Don Roos had given the same care to John Grogan's work life I might have a lot more nice things to say about Marley & Me. Unfortunately, the filmmakers give such a strange and distorted idea of how journalism works that it becomes distracting. Trust me when I tell you that no journalist has ever shown hesitation about being promoted and been handed double his pay as an enticement. Even if there were an ounce of truth to this story, the movie doesn't make it remotely believable by playing it as Arkin and Wilson play out the scene in Marley & Me.
It's a little thing but it irritated me.
Aside from the job stuff, Marley & Me is a fun, thoughtful, well crafted family movie that gets right every aspect of owning and loving a dog. Even if you don't own or love dogs you will appreciate the way Director David Frankel and stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston never condescend to the audience. The film is serious about the way it treats the Grogan family and the humor emanates from a place of truth because of that seriousness.
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