Marmaduke
I’m not really the audience for this film, as I was reminded of in a rather militaristic fashion during this movie’s 88 minutes. Who is the audience then? I’m still trying to figure that out, but definitely people for whom the idea of talking animals and animals behaving like people still holds some interest. After Pixar’s “Ratatouille”- and Dug in “Up” (which kind of hit the gold standard of talking animals)- I think I’ve finally grown out of it…
Or maybe this version of “Marmaduke” is just bad. Too obvious a story. Too lame in its’ comedy (oooo, a dog park is like high school, whatever will they come up with next). Too wasteful of good actors (yes, Owen Wilson gives it his all as the titular dog, and some of the supporting voices are good, but human actors like Judy Greer and William H. Macy are completely wasted). And maybe it’s just me, but the look of the animals actually talking in this movie just didn’t work.
I’ve never actually read the Marmaduke comic strip (though I do remember a great joke about him in Season Three of “Buffy”), but I’m pretty sure that’s not the issue. I think the issue comes down to creative bankruptcy in Hollywood. In the past week I’ve seen three films that just felt like they had nothing new to say, and the tired sequel of “Shrek” was the best of them! (And did I really just give this a worse grade than the grating “Sex and the City 2?”) I get making entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but it seems like too many in the ‘Wood are making films based on existing properties not because of some genuine feeling for the characters and their world (see Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are”), but because the name recognition might make ’em a few bucks (see just about every reboot that’s come out the past few years, and still to come).
Of course, that means that someone has to have heard of the property first. How many kids read the funny pages anymore? I’ll admit I enjoyed Peanuts and Garfield back in the day, but that just makes me feel the generational divide with the younger generation still in single digits all the more.
