Marley & Me: The Movie Review

Overall 4.52 of 5 view all 50 reviews

LauraBelle
South Elgin, IL

Writing, a Great Cast, and an Adorable Dog Make for a Great Film

lifelong dog lover, Movie Reviewer, a storyteller, A Big Giant Sap, a believer of fate, mother of 2

Pros

Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Warm, Adorable dog, funny

JAN

2009

Marley & Me: The Movie —

I fashion myself sometimes more of a storyteller than a writer, and some of my favorite stories are the ones about the dog we had when my husband and I first got married. We were saving the marriage of my in-laws by taking this destructive dog off their hands, and in the process she nearly ruined ours, and we were newlyweds. I couldn't not think back through all of that while watching Marley & Me.

Maggie was a gorgeous English Setter mix, and I never thought about writing a book about our life with her, but watching Marley & Me, I'm realizing that I definitely had the same material. Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson star as Jennifer and John Grogan in the film version of Marley & Me. They're newlyweds, too, and she has a defined plan of how their lives will go, from marriage on down. To avoid the next natural step of starting a family, John gets her a puppy which he names after Bob Marley, but what he doesn't realize is that he wasn't avoiding anything. He was starting a family.

Jen is away on business, both she and John are newspaper writers, when Marley is first brought home, so she misses out on the all important bonding of the first few days with Marley. Unwittingly, John created a relationship that he wasn't looking for with Marley. This new dog is exhausting, never listening, tearing everything up, and running away every time he goes offleash. Maggie wasn't a puppy when we got her, but we went through three separate crates with her when we'd go away. She was Houdini and always got out. I'd come home from work to find fruit torn up that she'd pulled off the kitchen counter, the vertical blinds pulled down, pillows eaten, carpeting ripped up, the bathtub plugged up with running water about to flood, and even doors off the hinges. Yes, you read that right.

Yet, she was still our family, just as Marley became for the Grogans. She wasn't all that happy when we introduced babies to our family, just as Marley isn't, but she also didn't stop guarding their cribs. Marley was originally the Grogans third member of the family, and at some point, John stopped fighting Jen's desire to have children, and realized if he could welcome Marley, he'd welcome children as well. It was like taking care of Marley helped open him up to the other possibilities. Marley turned him into a family man.

John saw himself as a news reporter, and didn't go very far with that. His boss, played wonderfully by Alan Arkin, gave him the opportunity to substitute for a columnist, and John was at a loss for what to write about. He finally wrote about the only thing that was on his mind, and that was his life with Marley. It opened up a whole new world for him as he wrote more columns about his and Jen's life in Palm Beach, and more often than not, they included Marley. He became extremely successful with this format, and when he tried to go back to reporting the news, he struggled to not involve a piece of himself. Later, he saw a story in all those old columns and wrote Marley & Me.

Marley & Me is so much more than just a cute dog movie. While I know it's not the best movie of 2008, it is most definitely my favorite, both because of the way I connected to it and the way the story presented itself. The packed theater was filled with collective awwws and collective laughter. My daughter and I walked out with tear-stained faces, and I'm pretty sure we weren't the only ones. Grogan had a way of writing this story about his life with his dog and family and opening us up to the same warmth he was opened up to by welcoming Marley, a lovable, very destructive dog, into his life.