Marmaduke (2010)

In short, the CGI talking dogs was done extremely well, even carrying on through nuances found in most dogs - head-tilts, twitches, etc. Typical past CGI attempts practically demanded that the subject remain still while the effects are applied. So, I have to give very high marks to the special effects. The Marmaduke character is very likable as are most of the ensemble here. The story is predictable but I had a fairly good time and even found the humor to be occasionally very funny from a dog-oriented viewpoint. I truly didn't expect much from this but ended up liking it quite a bit. Having said that I will say that I enjoyed it once and will probably never watch it again, but I believe kids 7 to 11 would enjoy it quite a bit.

Fmovies: Every now and then, a movie comes out that critics, general audiences, and social network users love to pick on. Furry Vengeance came out in April of this year, receiving bad reviews and performing badly at the box office because it was unappealing to moviegoers. Now we have another one of those flicks, and low and behold, it's in the same category. Talking animals, and an attempt to be family friendly, but instead looks poorly not-so family friendly. When I first heard about the flick, I thought it would be just humans talking and trying to help and protect animals through bad circumstances, something I would do if I made a movie. But then the front page said "featuring the voice of Owen Wilson", and I thought, uh-oh, another talking animal movie. I watched the trailer, and it threw at me all the stock clichés, comedic pauses, rated PG, men rejected by women even for heroic causes, a use of teenagers instead of elementary school children (ie. ET and it's rip off "Mac and Me"), use of stars who are desperate for a paycheck, and several gross-out jokes. It was like I was trained to expect this in every live action family comedy released in this day and age. Could it possibly get any worse, I thought. Yes it did. A terribly executed dog dance at the end was so assaultive that my eyes were about to bulge out of my skull just like BoCo when he was tricked by Bill and Ben in The Diseasel, a Thomas the Tank Engine episode. With businesses down, foreclosures of houses, lay offs of jobs, high ticket prices, a bad box office summer this year, high ticket prices, and the ability to criticize films on social networks these days, I don't exactly see this as a surefire success, but then again, I'm secretly and sadly expecting it to be. By the way, I'm all ready to go back to a decade and a half to simpler times when I go see Toy Story 3. Save your money on that. I think I see the downfall of good CGI and decency with talking animals here. So far Babe is the best talking animal movie I can think of. Maybe you should let your kids see that.

Don't know why so many people have a downer on this.I took my 7yo and 3yo boys to this and they really liked it!

I thought it was OK, not great but OK easy to watch. Now is that not what a kids film should be? Too many people out there think they are experts, just relax man and watch the movie.

Instead of writing crap about every film, it's unfair as myself as a parent checked the reviews for this. I am pleased I ignored them as I have my suspicions about a lot of these reviewers. This is a long line now in poor reviews which turn out to be decent movies. End result the kids had a good time watching a nice gentle movie with some laughs-get over yourselves.

Marmaduke fmovies. I just saw this movie for the first time. I came to it with an open mind willing to be entertained. I have to admit that it was a good family movie that it is paced well and tells a simple story. Not full of of slapstick joke, but it has a very refreshing predictable and simple plot and easy to follow. A great movie for discussing family values and what loyalty, love and friendship is all about and the dynamics of it.

Good family movie . . . don't listen to the basher and purist that movies have to be a perfect reflection of reality. This is a great movie in a traditional sense.

Sit and back and enjoy it . . .

I seriously think some users here on IMDb are being undeservedly harsh on this movie. What the motives are, I'm not too sure, but I can recommend some of them to watch the documentary Heckler. Now, back to subject, sorry for digressing, I've seen worse movies get higher ratings at IMDb. Now, I'm not really a fan of Owen Wilson or movies that have animals talking, but I feel this movie is at least a high 4 to low 5, in keeping in line with other movies reviewed on IMDb. I voted 5. I watched 2 movies - namely, Thomas the cool mule and that Aussie Ted movie that I would rank at 2 - 3 each, but not this movie. This movie is not brilliant or the best kiddies movie out there, but it's good, clean family fun. That's all I expected when I took my kid to watch this. And he enjoyed it. Unlike those other 2 movies I mentioned earlier.

The funniest joke in the long-awaited live-action/CGI adaptation of everyone's second-least favourite comic strip Marmaduke is actually intentional, which is kind of impressive. Of course, it's not funny in the way that the filmmakers intended it to be funny so that's too bad I guess but it is actually a joke that is actually funny. Some connection had been made, through the layers of awful script and boring staging and legitimately creepy CGI. They intended to make me laugh, when they had the mean dog Bosco call out our Owen-Wilson-voiced hero in the middle of the hero's crowning moment, a big raucous "O.C. rager" of a party, icing our dog out with a growled, "Marmaduke? More likeÂ… Marmafake." And they did.

I laughed, I admit it. Marmapuke, Marmapoop, MarmadreckÂ… there's a lot of ways the screenwriters could have gone, and they chose Marmafake, whichÂ…well dog-gone it, it doesn't even rhyme. Notes: I also laughed when the filmmakers, seeking to set the tone after Marmaduke & family's big cross-country move to the O.C. from Kansas so the dad (Lee Pace) could work for a dog-food company with a mean boss (William H. Macy, for some inexplicable reason) by mixing "California" by Phantom Planet almost directly into "California Love" by 2Pac. I assume they'd spent all the soundtrack licensing money by that point, because they left out "California" by Belinda Carlisle and "California" by John Mayall and "California" by Joni Mitchell and "Going back to Cali(fornia)" by L.L. Cool J and "Hotel California" by the Eagles. Too bad.

Anyway Marmaduke is, we're told, a big, gangly goofy dog played by two or more real dogs in the film, that talks with a creepy CGI animated mouth. I'm pretty sure, at least, that they used more than one dog because sometimes Marmaduke has a big, dangly pair of testicles, and sometimes he doesn't, which is obviously problematic and I started thinking, while on-screen Marmaduke was having another interminable dialogue session with some other dog about something that to so brazenly, as filmmakers, use dogs with varying levels of testicle-havingness is kind of bold, almost as if they're saying "Yeah, sometimes 'duke's got nuts and sometimes he doesn't. We don't care, because nobody will notice, and if they do notice, it's because you're a perverted weirdo who both looks at and notes dog's nuts." Which left me feeling vaguely insulted, and terribly aggrieved.

So Marmaduke has some friends that are dogs and some enemies, and he makes some mistakes and eventually gets sad and runs away from his family and his haughty girlfriend, voiced by Fergie from the Black-Eyed Peas, who is actually a better voice actor than she is a singer. Marmaduke then falls into a sink-hole along with another funny-looking but faithful and nice dog (voice of Emma Stone) and then or perhaps before then there is a dog-surfing championship and everything is fine, even the sub-plots about 'duke's dad's mean boss and his kid that hates soccer.

Kids might like it, but I doubt it, as aside from being creepy and awkward and really poorly plotted it's justÂ… dull. One of the first thing they teach you in screen writing school is "show, don't tell", that expository dialogue is a no-no and narrators all the more so. But dogs can't really act, and they don't really do anything except run around and eat sandwi