Marmaduke: Critic Reviews

If the phrase ''From the producer of Garfield'' doesn't scare you off, then step right up.

Like most movies aimed at the kindergarten set, Marmaduke balances its giggly, gross-out gags with a stern moral agenda.

Fans of the single-panel cartoon that has run in newspapers since the 1950s will find plenty to disappoint them in this live-action adaptation.

Lines like "Get your bark on," "Who let the dogs out?" and "Cowabarka" abound. Many of the jokes revolve around excretory functions.

When one of the last sounds you hear in a work of family entertainment is a Great Dane passing gas, there's only one conclusion to be drawn. The movie hates your family.

Its only redeeming values are an insane dog-surfing competition that feels like a weird dream you may have once had, and a mangy street mongrel whose slobbery lips give perhaps the finest Sam Elliott performance ever. The rest is pure kibble.

It's a lot of twists and turns for very little reward. But bottom line, will the kids like it? Quite possibly.

The moment I saw Marmaduke's big drooling lips moving, I knew I was in trouble.

As talking-dog movies go, Marmaduke makes Beverly Hills Chihuahua look like Up.

Kids deserve better. Heck, dogs deserve better.

Scripters Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio have cobbled together a plot from bits and pieces of other family-friendly pics.

I'm envisioning a sequel that joins together two towering franchises, only with an R rating for excessive gore: Marmaduke Versus Alvin and the Chipmunks, anyone?

Even by talking-critter comedy standards, Marmaduke lacks mirth and imagination.

Marmaduke is a dog of a film that deserves to be put down.

This is another opus to take that small, well-trodden step from the funny pages to the big screen. But we're in live-action territory here, meaning that real people actors compete for camera time with real dog actors.

Bland sitcom romp based on the long-running comic strip features wisecracking canines in a beach-set family story.

It's kind of fun. For about five minutes.

full review at Movies for the Masses

Marmaduke sinks to Beverly Hills Chihuahua levels of awfulness and only reaffirms that talking animals aren't funny -- they're boring.

Spectacularly sentimental, full of ridiculous computer-animated action, and makes sure its animals are a good deal less pallid than the humans on view.

There is only so much fun you can have with a talking dog and Marmaduke quickly exhausts the possibilities.

Better than Cats & Dogs, but praise hardly comes much lower.

Oh dear.