Marley & Me (***)

Directed by: David Frankel
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Owen Wilson, Eric Dane, Kathleen Turner, Alan Arkin
Seen: March 29th 2009

*** Out of ****

Marketed as a comedy, this film surely has its laughs and amusements, but it is in actual fact a bit more of a drama with a high laugh quotient. It tells the story of the Grogan family across the span of 14 years. A while after their marriage during a freak spring blizzard, Jenny (Aniston) starts showing signs of lurking motherhood, and John (Wilson) follows advice from his co-worker Sebastian Tunney (Dane), and gets her a dog. A yellow Labrador to be specific, and he calls him Marley, as the dog seems to enjoy the singer’s music on the way home.

The film follows mainly the family, with some ventures into John’s life as a writer for first the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and a few years later The Philadelphia Inquirer. John wants, with all his heart, to be a reporter like his friend Sebastian, but is never given the opportunity. He inherits the Sun Sentinel’s column, which he initially writes two to three times a week, but eventually on a daily basis. One very memorable scene takes an Owen Wilson narrated detour through the things he writes about in a fast-edited montage of travelling/normal life sequences, and we see that most of the columns he writes are about Marley, because Marley is no ordinary dog. Marley is incorrigible, and even after time with a very militaristic dog-trainer, Mrs. Kornblut (Turner), we know this dog is not going to change his traits as he is banned from the dog obedience school.

The film gets under your skin with its simple portrayal of relationships, in the family or at work, not putting anything beyond the believable realm. Marley, even though he is such a menace, becomes the heart of the film, and you can’t help but smile at all the antics he gets up to. Owen Wilson does a great job as the somewhat conflicted father who loves Jenny and Marley and the kids with all his heart. Jennifer Aniston gets better and better as the years go by and there is not a scene in which she isn’t completely believable and downright honest as Jenny, who struggles with leaving her job to tend to the children at home and at one stage even gets fed-up with Marley to such a degree that she wants him gone.

I myself am not a dog-lover in even the slightest degree, but this movie just got to me, made me start considering having a dog one day. Marley might be the world’s worst dog, but he is the Grogan family’s dog, and nothing will change that. The film shows you that you don’t just get rid of a problem like an unruly dog, you deal with it, and get out all the better for it. Marley & Me is an absolute treat.