“Marley & Me” isn’t what you think – or at least if you haven’t read the best-selling memoir of the same title on which it’s based. If you only saw the TV commercials, you’d think it was just about a yellow lab who’s as adorable as he is rambunctious.
Instead, the film is more about the lives of John and Jenny Grogan (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) as they start their lives together as a married couple, relocate to Florida, make career advancements and transitions, and have children. Meanwhile, there’s always Marley.
Marley joined the Grogan family shortly after John and Jenny got married as John’s way of temporarily avoiding a baby when Jenny got baby fever. Marley was supposed to be a great dog who would bring them joy and fun, but we immediately learn that Marley is far from perfect. He chews drywall, swallows a brand new, expensive necklace, jumps out of a car window on his way to be neutered, sends the Grogans on high-speed chases down the beach and through neighbors’ backwards and so on. To quote John himself, Marley is “the world’s worst dog.”
Yet, the movie effectively shows that Marley stands in for one’s life fantasies gone wrong. Just as Marley who was supposed to be the perfect dog turned into the world’s worst dog, the Grogan’s perfect life does not work out the way they planned.
John and Jenny were both successful newspaper writers – John a reporter and Jenny a features writer. Jenny soon quits work to be a full-time mother, and John transitions into a lifestyles columnist with Marley’s antics supplying the bulk of his hugely successful columns.
But John never wanted to be a columnist. In fact, he’s envious of his friend Sebastian’s successes. Sebastian (“Grey’s Anatomy’s” Eric Dane) isn’t tied down by a wife and family, he’s free to travel the world reporting on in-depth stories, and eventually leaves the Florida newspaper they work at to write for The New York Times. John longs to once again be a reporter covering serious topics and subsequently moves his family to Pennsylvania where he can take a reporting job.
Yet, John’s not happy doing that either. In a far cry from the movie’s fun, upbeat commercials about a crazy dog, “Marley & Me” is actually quite dismaying at times. As the Grogans struggle with unhappiness, fights, crying babies, and Marley’s constant unruliness, it makes me wonder why people even have kids or get married in the first place.
This movie shows our lives at its worst. (This mature situation, however, is a great vehicle for Wilson, an eternal boy-man, to flex his acting chops, and he proves he can indeed play a real adult).
Marley, however, isn’t really the world’s worst dog as John later tells him when he realized how important he is to him and his family, and their lives really weren’t always that bad either. Even though Marley was usually a walking, wagging disaster, he was with them through the good and bad times of their lives.
But Marley also helps the film resonate more with its viewers because almost everyone can relate to the power of the dog-human connection. If you don’t like dogs, this film may not be for you.
If you do love dogs, however, the film still may disappoint you at times. It focuses too much on Marley’s bad traits instead of also showing the endearing ones, and it drags out some scenes at the end too much. While this film is about family, it might not be the best film for the whole family to see, especially the little ones.
In essence, this movie effectively captures the ups and downs of people’s lives and that you can’t plan your life. The film starts with Jenny telling John that marrying him was the first step in her plan; but, by the end of the film her plan filled with essential life steps is obsolete and we all know it.
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