Marley & Me wasn’t a great film, and by the standards of what makes a good family film, it was still only mediocre. It had Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston phoning in very weak performances as the two flabbergasted owners of a mutt that most people would have kicked to the curb after its multiple failures to absorb any sort of discipline. It wasn’t entirely the dog’s fault though, because Marley’s antics became Owen Wilson’s meal ticket as he wrote a column devoted to the crazy adventures Marley got into. Overall, it depended entirely on the audience thinking Marley was adorable and sympathizing as owners of pets (or parents) themselves. Unfortunately for the studio, it didn’t leave much room for a sequel. So what did they do? They made Marley & Me: The Puppy Years, an in-between-quel, staging it as a side adventure from when Marley was still a puppy, and realizing that it no longer had the star power to draw in parents, they spun it into the lowest of the low in children’s film genres: the talking dog adventure.
Woe be unto the writer or director charged with creating a story around talking dogs and the humans that own them, for theirs is a film of horrible puns and slapstick comedy. This is the kind of film that makes children stupider and doesn’t give them any credit for being able to absorb entertainment that doesn’t spoon feed them corny jokes and lame attempts at cashing in on pop culture phrases that have long ceased to be relevant. All of this occurs in the frame of a teenager charged with taking care of Marley while his owners are on vacation, but doing so while staying at his Grandpa’s house where he decides to build a discipline course and train a team of dogs to compete in a local competition. It hits all the predictable beats of playing off the differences between young and old, stereotyping dogs as having certain personalities and then naming them accordingly. Oh, she’s the token female dog? Let’s name her “Fuchsia”, because girls like pink and flowers. Oh, they’re German dog trainers? They will be devoted to efficiency and comically rigid.
The story is laughable, the dialogue makes you wish you could put each and every dog in the film to sleep, and it only succeeds in making you long for the days of Beethoven’s 2nd when sequels to canine-centric films didn’t resort to the anthropomorphic methods of today. Why can’t the dogs just do silly things with the humans in the film delivering the witty dialogue? Is that too much to ask?
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The two featurettes include pieces on training the dogs and their interactions with the humans. It also gives you the option to highlight favorite moments in the film. Shame on you if you use that final function.
"Marley & Me: The Puppy Years" is on sale August 16, 2011 and is rated PG. Children & Family, Comedy. Directed by Michael Damian. Written by Janeen Damian, Michael Damian. Starring Donnelly Rhodes, Grayson Russell, Travis Turner, Sydney Imbeau.
