Review: Marmaduke

In the interest of full disclosure, I was sent a DVD of Marmaduke for review, but I received no compensation, and all opinions expressed are my own.

I love how so many things from my childhood are becoming popular again (the zippered jeans being an exception). Apparently, I'm at a good age, and this is definitely a time I'm focused on enjoying so many of those special memories.

One of them was reading the Sunday comics with my dad. He had his favorites, and I had mine. They didn't always overlap, but we'd always read every comic, including the ones neither of us liked. We could always both agree on Marmaduke though. He was always such a silly dog who was funny but still harmless and without a mean bone in his body.

A new Marmaduke movie was just released, and Marmaduke is now live action. For some reason, I always pictured him as a cartoon, but the advances in computers makes a live action pet movie totally doable - especially when it stars Owen Wilson, George Lopez, Kiefer Sutherland, and Fergie (apparently I'm not the only one with nostalgia for childhood?).

Marmaduke has been reinvented and has a whole lot more character and personality than he did in the comic strip. He's also got some new pals, like his best friend the cat Carlos.

I was hoping to watch this with the wee ones, since I so enjoyed Marmaduke as a child, but the movie is rated PG for some rude humor and language - definitely things I don't want to introduce to the wee ones. I was disappointed by this, as there's no need to introduce things like this into just about every movie to make it something worth watching, but that's a whole 'nother post. I'm also sure that I'm in the minority in not letting my 5 and almost 7 year olds watch a PG rated movie, but those are the values we live by.

Instead, I popped in the movie to watch myself. Marmaduke and his family have moved from Kansas (the type of Marmaduke I remember) to the O.C. Needless to say, Marmaduke doesn't exactly fit in with the family's new life. He makes new friends with mutts he meets at a park, and the usual "I'm better than you but never abandon your friends" lesson is learned by Marmaduke throughout the movie.

My view? It was ok. This is definitely not my favorite movie, and some of the humor was too juvenile for me, but this movie was totally up my husband's alley. He loved it, and that doesn't surprise me. I'll let him keep the DVD in the rotation - but again, the wee ones don't get to see this one for awhile. I was hoping for something closer to the comic strip I remember reading as a child, but I also don't see how you can turn that into a full length movie.