Marley & Me
Dir: David Frankel
2008
*
Marley & Me made me (and my wife) very unhappy. I absolutely loved the book. I couldn't put it down and I cried my eyes out at the end which was rather embarrassing, as I was on a crowded Greek beach at the time. It's such a simple but lovely story of a man, his dog and a young family. An easy story to adapt into a film you would have thought. I respect that no film is easy to make and there is the saying 'Never work with Children or Animals' but I don't except that in this adaptation as film and book have nothing in common apart from a Dog called Marley. The casting of Owen Wilson is puzzling. I like Mr Wilson but I'm afraid he couldn't have been further from the character he was portraying. Jenifer Aniston is okay as it goes but her character is given far too much screen time due to the fact she's quite famous and expensive when the book didn't feature her much at all. The film tells little of the true story and misses out on all the really good bits and then, for reasons that are totally beyond me, makes things up. This is so unnecessary. The book is nice and simple and that's half its beauty. The film is structured really badly, the direction is nothing special and only Alan Arkin really shines, albeit, in a character that's not actually in the book. Speaking of which, what was the point of Eric Dane? Why? Apparently they used 35 different dogs, I believe it, I could point them all out to you as none of them looked the same. The last poor dog (old Marley), was actually a Greyhound with cotton wool stuck to it. Great sections of the book such as the stabbing of a neighbour, the Aunt coming to stay, heartwarming stories with the author's dad, are either missing or portrayed badly in the film. So that brings me to the ending. The books version was perfect. Just one line was needed in the book to sum up the whole story and it was tender, heartfelt and dignified. So what do they do in the film? Owen Wilson blubs incoherently, "I love you, love you so much, don't die". Please, did anyone working on this film actually read the book? I didn't feel an ounce of emotion I did reading the book. I didn't really care that Marley had died either as he wasn't really in the film. All you got was an emotionless mutt that you could see was obviously waiting for orders from its trainer who was just slightly off screen, far from the real Marley. It's just rubbish. My favourite scene has got to be when they are in the car at the airport. It's raining but you can quite clearly see people in shorts and t-shirts lapping up the sunshine outside. Be ashamed everybody involved, you have made a terrible film that should have been an easy dead cert. A beautiful piece of literature has been abused.