Marley & Me: Critic Reviews

A disarmingly enjoyable, wholehearted comic vision of the happy messiness of family life.

At the end of Marley & Me you don't leave the theater with a sense that anything much has been learned, only that a fixture in the Grogans' comfortable suburban lives has been removed.

In the cinema, all of us tough, cynical critics had tears welling in our eyes, swallowing hard; our lips, so often curled in a cheap sneer, were now trembling, because of the same desperately sad thought: "Owen Wilson used to be really good..."

Marley's misadventures play like a TV movie, never reaching the heights of such endearing canine-centered films as 2000's My Dog Skip.

Not every book has a movie lurking in it.

The movie never captures the crucial leap that made the book a hit. It's never Marley & Us.

Marley & Me proves how lifeless Lady and the Tramp would have been if told from the p.o.v. of Jim Dear and Darling.

If characters talking to dogs and dog reaction shots are some of your favorite things, add some stars to this review.

The production manages, against heavy odds, to make its canine star an incorrigible bore. The problem is bad parenting.

Marley, of course, steals every scene he's in, which is most of them.

Marley & Me turns out to be the best -- and truest -- film about humans and our animals to arrive onscreen in a dog's age.

When Marley is not on the screen, Wilson and Aniston demonstrate why they are gifted comic actors. They have a relationship that's not too sitcomish, not too sentimental, mostly smart and realistic.

The book, like the movie it inspired, is a sweet, surprisingly moving chronicle of a young couple's struggle to simultaneously build a family, advance their careers and maintain their sanity.

Doesn't consistently capture the book's personable tone.

Marley boasts animal magnetism.

David Frankel adapts John Grogan's sentimental bestseller with no artistic pretensions beyond alternately making you feel like your heart is caving in, then injecting you with a gigantic syringe of good cheer.

Marley & Me is everything you could want in a holiday movie -- family friendly, touching, funny. Plus, it's surprisingly intelligent and real. It may be the best family film of the year.

Need a shortcut to manipulate an audience's emotions? Always go with the dog.

This perky, episodic film is as broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of the final reel.

I said to Lady, "It's a labra-bore"/She said, "Scout, you overpraise."

The book has been known to make grown men weep. But seeing the movie, you can't help but feel had.

You should bring lots of Kleenex with you. It might just come in handy.

A dog movie that isn't a dog of a movie -- what a pleasant Christmas surprise.

The movie is ultimately less about the pain of loss than about the way families often take shape around a pet.

Want to see a grown man cry? Take him to Marley & Me.