There are several weird things about Marley and Me, a Hollywood comedy which has done very well commercially in the States and will undoubtedly follow suit in the rest of the world. Based on the bestselling memoirs by columnist John Grogan (subtitled Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog), it's unconventional in that it doesn't follow the traditional plot structure that is normally de rigeur for a film of this size.
In fact, there doesn't really seem to be any structure to it at all. It's an episodic look at a young couple as they settle down and have children and the trials and tribulations they undergo with their feisty Labrador by the name of Marley. Some people might find pleasure in the sheer act of just watching it, but a lot of people are going to be very confused as to what they are meant to be getting out of it all.
It really takes a long time to get going (and at 115 minutes is way too long) and seems to depend on the lovable shagginess of the two leads and their canine co-star. Wilson and Aniston are aspiring journalists climbing up the regional news ladder. They try for children with difficulty, and then success. He is transferred to writing a column about the hilarious antics of his dog. There's a conclusion that's as inevitable as it is slightly disturbing.
The dog stuff isn't even that funny: largely consisting of montages in which he runs amok, is expelled from dog-training school and the like. You never really get much of an impression of the dog, which is strange as for the title character he is something of a peripheral feature.
The same could be said of Aniston, who runs the gamut of emotion from A to A, and seems to be in the film because of the marquee value of her name. There's also a particularly dreadful sequence in which the duo trot off to Hollywood-Ireland on their honeymoon. It's left to the ever-likeable Wilson then to shoulder the whole thing, and without him this would really have struggled to get off the ground.
Paul Hurley
