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Title: Marley & Me (2008)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Owen Wilson | ... | John | |
| Jennifer Aniston | ... | Jenny | |
| Eric Dane | ... | Sebastian | |
| Kathleen Turner | ... | Ms. Kornblut | |
| Alan Arkin | ... | Arnie Klein | |
| Nathan Gamble | ... | Patrick (Age 10) | |
| Haley Bennett | ... | Lisa | |
| Ann Dowd | ... | Dr. Platt | |
| Clarke Peters | ... | Editor | |
| Finley Jacobsen | ... | Conor (Age 8) | |
 |
Lucy Merriam | ... | Colleen (Age 5) |
| Bryce Robinson | ... | Patrick (Age 7) | |
| Ben Hyland | ... | Conor (Age 5) | |
|
|
Sarah O'Kelly | ... | Neighbor Mom (Nurse) |
| Keith Hudson | ... | Big Guy | |
After their wedding, newspaper writers John and Jennifer Grogan move to Florida. In an attempt to stall Jennifer's "biological clock", John gives her a puppy. While the puppy Marley grows into a 100 pound dog, he loses none of his puppy energy or rambunctiousness. Meanwhile, Marley gains no self-discipline. Marley's antics give John rich material for his newspaper column. As the Grogans mature and have children of their own, Marley continues to test everyone's patience by acting like the world's most impulsive dog. Written by Ken Miller <wkmiller704@yahoo.com>
Its all about the nesting.
We have a guy, who we are told is one of the best reporters in the world. He is the designated observer of our hero, about which we get a professional report.
Our hero is a newspaper writer, who throughout the movie we see develops a sort of public journal as a newspaper column. The column becomes successful, the success directly related to how interesting his life is, or rather the description of his life. As the film goes on, we come to understand that these columns are collected into a book which becomes the basis of the screenplay. Its a common enough introspective fold.
The twist here is that we have the dog and he plays three roles. He is the real designated watcher, as the reporter mentioned above fades away, his role in this regard comes into play.
He is also the object of the stories, in the column and hence on the screen. Its a clever trick because we have this problem. We need genre because otherwise we cannot "read" films. But we reject the predictability of genre. So if we want the warmth of a love story but want to be fooled that we are watching something else, you put in a parallel token story. Here it is a sort of "Old Yeller" or even "The Yearling," He becomes not only the device that diverts us as viewers, but the columnist's readers as well.
And he is something else as well. There is an unwritten rule in these man/woman dramas: the man misbehaves because he simply cannot control himself. Many of our Apatow-like plays have the problem that the guy has to be destructive but still by the end lovable. The narrative folding allows us to transfer this to the dog, who is consistently destructive.
Other than the fact that the narrative structure is finely engineered, this movie has no value.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.