I remember a special, more magical time years ago when 20th Century Fox used to put out movies that were actually worth a damn. It was a time when you knew you were probably in for fun whenever you heard those drums playing into a shot of searchlights highlighting one of the most iconic logos in American history. Following in the footsteps of “Alvin and the Chipmunks” before it, “Marmaduke”, based on the newspaper comic strip of the same name continues 20th Century Fox’s marketing plan to bank on the ignorance of kids while slowly erasing any credibility They may have left.
Marmaduke (voiced by Owen Wilson) is the fun loving yet trouble making dog of the Winslow family. His owner and head of the family, Phil (Lee Pace), in an attempt to offer his ungrateful, disneyfied family a better life, decides to take a job offer that has the family move to California. There, Marmaduke makes new friends and learns life lessons as he tries to win the affections of the most popular female dog of the town (Fergie), who happens to be the girlfriend of the alpha dog of the town (Kiefer Sutherland) as well, oblivious to the feelings that his new best friend (Emma Stone) has for him.
“Marmaduke” was a particularly hard one to sit through. It’s bad, no doubts or arguments about it but what I genuinely found annoying about “Marmaduke” was the formula and clichés of its story. I am a huge fan of the late great director, producer, and screenwriter, John Hughes. The man knew how to perfectly humanize teenagers in film, depicting their realistic drama and problems with a realistic weight and logical solutions rather than putting them on an annoying melodramatic level of most bad teen soap operatic stories of modern and bygone periods, “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” being two of my absolute favorite movies of all time. I bring this up because “Marmaduke” follows the tropes of Hughes’ films to a T, which makes it all the more painful to watch as it’s insipid, yet constantly ripping off a plethora of films that I genuinely love.
“Marmaduke” has all of the trappings of a stereotypical juvenile kid’s flick; fart jokes, pee jokes, dog puns, pop-culture references, an agonizingly annoying dance number before the credits, you name it, and this movie is guilty of it. Add to that, the horrible CGI talking mouths for the pets that never once stop being jarring to look at, and you’ve got a successful helping of insult added to your injury. All of that is just revolving around Marmaduke himself however. When the film doesn’t focus on his zany (un)funny antics, you’ve got Phil trying to desperately overcome his crippling case of “Disney Dad Syndrome”, the symptoms of which include, an unappreciative, unforgiving, and ungrateful family that criticizes every move he makes for his job to pay for their way of life, for simply not dropping his work completely to spend quality time with them.
Okay now for a few positives. As bad as the product is as a whole, I am genuinely surprised at how excellent the voice acting was. They may not have had much material to work with but this is one of the few instances in which a star studded cast for a studio film actually enhanced the movie rather than do nothing for it. In addition, Phil’s boss, played by William H. Macy, also has a few funny moments that are enhanced by Macy’s performance. They were the only chuckles I got out of the entire movie
All faults aside, the problems of “Marmaduke” can be seen coming a mile away if you were to so much as a take a 5 second glance at a poster for the movie. I wasn’t expecting much and I essentially got just that. It is what it is and what it is is simply a bad children’s movie. Not a terrible one but a bad one nonetheless.
3.5/10
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