Review of Marmaduke (2010) by John M — 14 Nov 2010

Should have been called Mar-ma-duuuke!, so as to be in accordance with how every human says this giant dog's name. I guess we are going to get a movie for every property in existence, because we've now resorted to making movies based on one-panel comic strips.

Not even the traditional three-panel strip, where there's some vague notion of a story, this is just a ONE panel strip that is almost always: "he tore up the house... again!" I can't believe I'm about to describe the plot elements in Marmaduke, but it's about this family and their giant, unwieldy Great Dane that tears up the house and yard.

They move from Kansas to California, and this movie is about the family and the dog adjusting to their new social environment. To the movie's credit, I was expecting this to be possibly the worst movie I've seen all year, and it's not.

It's not GOOD by any stretch of the imagination, but for me, the movie gets by on being so unintentionally hilarious. All those horrendous puns that you find in any animal movie are here, and the CGI effects for the dog faces to make them look like they are talking, WOW do they look like shit.

Not that that makes a whole lot of sense, as Marmaduke never talked in the comic strip, but I may be reading too deeply into it. I can't lie, I frequently burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter at those CGI dog faces and the fact that I was watching Marmaduke: The Movie.

The only thing that really made me sad is that William H. Macy is in this... sigh. It's awful entertainment for kids that you should not let them see, but as far as finding a movie you can laugh AT (and not with), you could do a lot worse, because this is audaciously shitty.