movie review
Marmaduke
Classic cartoon canine springs to life
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I’m kind of a sucker for talking-animal movies. I think it has something to do with the way they move their little mouths and take on human characteristics. Plus, I was a big fan of Marmaduke as a kid and even owned a few of the paperbacks that featured him, so I was excited going into the movie.
Was it good? I loved the parts involving Marmaduke, because Owen Wilson has the perfect Marmaduke drawl. In fact, I actually laughed out loud a few times, which is always interesting when you’re sitting in a theater by yourself (I couldn’t get my teenagers interested in going). On the other hand, any time the adults were on screen, it was a little cheesy and fake.
Yeah, I know it’s a movie with talking dogs, but that doesn’t mean the actors have to look like they’re reading cue cards from the sidelines. So in short, more Marmaduke, less humans would have been ok by me.
The story finds Marmaduke and his family moving to California. His owner Phil Winslow has a great job opportunity working with an organic pet food company, helmed by the quirky Don Twombly (William H. Macy). So Phil and his wife Debbie (Judy Greer) pack up their kids and head west.
It doesn’t take long before the shenanigans begin. Marmaduke makes friends with a group of nice dogs who’ve always seemed a little outcast – just like Marmaduke because of his size. So a friendly dog named Mazie (Emma Stone) decides to help him out and show him the ropes.
The only problem is, once Marmaduke knows the ropes, he falls in with the “popular” dogs, including a cute dog named Jezebel (Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson) and her love interest Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland), who’s the big bully of the group.
You can see where this is going. It’s up to Marmaduke to figure out who his true friends are, and along the way, Phil gets a lesson in what truly matters in life, too – his family, not how much money he can make to buy them things.
It’s a cute movie and names like Chupadogra (voiced by Sam Elliott) are inspired, but it’s only getting 2.5 reels from me, because they could have done a lot more with the human contingent. But Marmaduke is big and fun and has a comical way of looking at things that makes it worth seeing if you’re a fan of these types of movies. And George Lopez voices the family’s cat, which is pretty fun, too.
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