Marley and Me: Dogsploitation?

Marley and Me is an interesting movie full of cinematic hits and misses. It's tough to make a final call on the film. So I'll break it down to what the film does right, and where the film goes horribly wrong. There will be no surprises in this review for anyone who has read the book (of the same title) by John Grogan, but if you haven't read the book and do intend to see the film, please don't continue. Spoilers ahead!

What's Good

For starters, this movie does a great job at approaching the portrayal of a married couple in love. There aren't many movies that attempt to show the issues of a long-term relationship. Most films are all about how a couple gets together, and many that do attempt to cover any sizeable span of time are so romantic that they're unrealistic. For example, "The Notebook". That's not to say that's a bad movie, but it's just not an entirely realistic approach to a love story. Nothing wrong with that, it's just the way the cinematic cookie crumbles. It's more entertaining that way.

But Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston cover a plethora of issues regarding love, marriage, sex, pregnancy, children, work, and so much more. This is mostly due to the fact that the author of the source material (his opinion columns at a South Florida newspaper) has a flare for communicating the nuances of everyday life. He is a columnist after all. But this provides great fuel for the script and actors.

Wilson and Aniston show the complexities of these issues and the fights they can cause. And my hat has to go off to both of these actors. Aniston in particular shows that she can open up and be an amazing actress. She's not afraid to portray a woman who is, at times, simply exhausted by pregnancy and childcare, stressed out and feeling stuck, and lashing out at the one person closest to her...her husband.

This was hard to watch at times, but also extremely amazing to see onscreen. So many films are really afraid to go there. Afraid to show an angry woman, a fallible woman, a real woman...afraid that it will make her look "mean" or less appealing onscreen. That's what was so rare for me about this film. I have seen a few others that start to approach covering this territory. ("The Ex" was one of those films.)

There are other great things about this movie. For starters, it's set in South Florida. This fact alone gives the film an escapist quality. It's January (in Indiana for me) and that is at least partially responsible for drawing me to the theater. The film is about a married couple who are both writers, and that's a part of the plot that hit extremely close to home for me. There's also the fact that it's got a very cute dog at the center of much of the action. A cute dog NEVER hurts a film. That being said, there were some problems with the "character" of Marley.

What's Bad

Marley, the titular dog that lies at the center of the book and now the film, is treated like a plot device. A way to mark the time. This is a clever use of the dog, but we don't get to see the dog in key moments. There are times in the film when an important moment is happening and you know Marley is there, but he's off-screen. Even cheesy dog-centric films like, "Turner and Hooch" or the "Beethoven" series do a good job of making the dog a character. Those films anthropomorphize their pups just enough to make us care, to feel like it has character traits and belongs in the story.

Don't get me wrong, Marley is adorable in this film. And there are many funny moments with the dog that work great and land right on the money. But we rarely see him interact with Wilson or Aniston as characters. He's always with them, but he's not paying any attention to them. I know this is likely because they had to use umpteen dogs to get the film made and a trainer was always standing just off-screen...I'm just saying. The dog needed to interact more with the actors.

Also, the film took a really bad turn at the beginning of the third act. Anyone who has read the book knows that the dog dies. We cover a large span of time with the dog, long enough for the new married couple to move and have three children and go through many life changes. Even those that haven't read the book can draw the inevitable conclusion. That the dog is going to die. Audiences are quick. Give us one cue, and we know what's coming. But this film doesn't trust the audience from the third act on, and it shows.

The film starts to give signs that the dog is aging. And right there, we get it. We know what's coming. The problem is that they do this about forty minutes away from the inevitable death scene. From this point on in the film, we are treated to a hideously slow crawl to a horribly sad finish. At least in, "Old Yeller", the sad ending was a surprise. It wasn't a long slow death march to the climax of the film. This is where they really blow it with the character of the dog. They treat us to multiple "the dog is about to die" fake-outs. And when that horrible moment finally comes, they show WAY too much. They even show the needle going into the IV that puts Marley to sleep. It's the very definition of gratuitous.

It's punishing. It's grueling. It's cruel to the audience and it's cruel to the character of Marley. I know, most people at this point are thinking, "It's a dog, what's the big deal?" But it feels like exploitation. You sit an audience down and it's not hard to get us to love a dog. And it's not difficult to make an audience sad about that dog dying. The filmmakers, the director or the editor...whoever had the final say in the timing of this third act, they worked WAY too hard to do something that was very easy to do. Make us sad about Marley.

To top it all off, after all that, there is a funeral scene with the family burying the dog. Did I mention that we had already had a goodbye scene with the dog and everyone in the family, before the trip to the vet? Well, we did. So here we're treated to yet another goodbye scene. If you're feeling like I'm writing too much about how much the movie pounds it into your brain with a sledgehammer that it's sad that the dog dies...then just try sitting through it.

After something that punishing, the audience should be rewarded. Rewarded with a big upsweeping positive ending. Something that redeems everything we've just been through, an ending that honors the idea of the dog's life instead of pulling a "Terms of Endearment" on us. Even the book manages to do this. But the movie does not. We end cold after the funeral scene, with a voice-over from Wilson drawing the inevitable conclusions about the rewards of faithful love and fidelity and how this parallels the love a dog has for its master. That you get what you give from a relationship. I agreed with the film's final sentiments. But can't we end with the family puppy shopping? Or maybe Marley has puppies? Something, absolutely anything but ending immediately after the funeral.

I have never in my life heard such weeping in a movie theater, from myself and my husband included. It was awful. Not even cathartic awful. Just the regular awful kind of awful. Luckily, some beautiful cinematography and locations, some great performances, a refreshingly family-centric plot, and one very cute dog manage to salvage the film. But not by much. Despite its torturous third act, the movie is worth a viewing for the honest portrayal of two people in love and how they deal with that sweeping on-set of mid-life existential malaise.

The funny thing is, I would've liked to have seen a movie about just the relationship without the dog, and had a different tone of film for the actual movie about Marley. The movie's loyalties were split. Is it a romantic comedy about a dog that binds two people together as the movie poster promises? Or is it a sweet and honest look at the lifespan of a very loving relationship that hits trouble after having children? It tries to be both, but it can't.

Allow me to take my own advice and end on an up note, a big thumbs up for Wilson's first onscreen performance since some personal troubles, and a huge thumbs up for Jennifer Aniston giving a sincere performance as a wife, mother, reporter, and much more. I can understand why the film is number one at the box office, even after the second week with a notoriously gut-wrenching ending. If you can stand the pain or you need a good cry, go give this one a shot while it's still in theaters.